Zynga CIO Resigns & Lands CEO Role at Nirvanix Online Storage

It has recently come to the attention of the online backup industry that Debra Chrapaty will be heading over to Nirvanix online backup in a month’s time where she will begin work as Chief Executive Officer.

Chrapaty’s decision to jump ship to Nirvanix hardly comes as a surprise, since it’s no secret that online backup is currently a booming industry.

Chrapaty will be resigning from her current Chief Information Officer position at Zynga where she oversaw the social gaming developer’s data. She has handled a number of monumental projects such as the company’s transition from AWS to a solution propriety at Zynga.

In her career at Microsoft previously, she led the tech giant’s data center expansion which helped aid in providing greater energy efficiency levels. She has also held the titles of both President and Chief Operating Manager of E*Trade, and Senior Vice President of Collaboration Software Group (Cisco).

There’s no doubt that San Diego-based Nirvanix will be eagerly awaiting Chrapaty’s arrival due to the wealth of experience she carries on her work belt. The company, which provides public, private and hybrid online backup services, has raised almost $70,000,000 through various investors to help develop its Enterprise online backup services. Khosla Ventures and Intel Capital are just some of the venture funding investors.

Online backup provider

The online backup provider has built itself to be a big name in the industry, collecting some 1200 clients, but faces strong competition from providers such as JustCloud and Amazon in the public market, Box in small business, and EMC in the legacy-provider field.

Despite stiff competition, Chrapaty sounded confident when she talked about her new position and ambitions. ‘What I’m excited about for Nirvanix is we offer a unique solution which is public and private online backup-based,’ she commented. ‘It’s highly available, enterprise secure, and also has various deployment models. So we’re catering for the unique needs of Fortune 1000 companies.’

Nirvanix Online Storage

After she joins the Nirvanix team, Chrapaty will use her acquired infrastructure know-how to help the company reach the decision on how best to expand its focus on products other than online backup which could distinguish it amongst the competition. Chrapaty declined to divulge any details of what these might be, however.

As for Zynga, it’s hard to predict the social gaming company’s future; once a star, it is not shining half as bright as it was during its heyday. With stock recently dropping beneath $5 since the tail-end of 2012, Chrapaty’s departure—which shortly follows the exit of other top executives—could prove to be a significant blow.

In Zynga’s statement which was issued a couple of days ago, David Ko named the successor to Chrapaty’s CEO position:

‘We thank Debra for her leadership and contributions over the years at Zynga, and wish her luck in future endeavours. Today, I’m proud to announce that Dorion Carroll is filling the CIO position. Dorion is an engineering veteran of twenty-five years, with a wealth of experience developing products and services, and also scaling teams from start-ups to large businesses. Dorion has provided leadership, management, and direction across various technology and product teams in his 3 years at Zynga. Our global network of players relies on the exceptional talent of our technology teams and the services they develop and provide. We look forward to Dorion’s leadership to bring even greater prioritization to these teams.’