Anthony Foley: An Impeccable Visionary Leader

By Author: insightssuccess
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Meet Antony Foley, the Chief Executive Officer, who holds a consistent track record of achieving aggressive business objectives and impacting change & growth at Parsec Labs. He is an accomplished and proven leader with a history of the building growing & sustaining businesses in the hi-tech arena.Founded in 2013 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Parsec Labs is the first complete storage portability solution that gives you the freedom to move, copy and keep data anywhere. Parsec Enterprise Data Portability is a unique single product for large scale migrations. With extremely flexible configurations; it adapts to suit your migration needs and lets you optimize your storage.

Learning Responsibilities in Life

Tony was fortunate to experience considerable success (relatively speaking) when he was in his late 20s. He sold a business in the UK (for a modest sum), and a part of the deal included a move to San Francisco. He expanded the operation to Los Angeles. Things couldn’t be better for Tony, and he moved back to the UK 3 three years later where he opened his own business employing 15 people. He thought he had ...
... the Midas touch. Far from it, the business bombed, and he came down to earth with a bang. Tony put the company into administration, and 15 people lost their jobs. He lost his house. He would like to blame market conditions, but he couldn’t. Tony had only himself to blame. It was a humbling experience. He had to pick up a bag once again and go out and earn a living with one child and one on the way. That learning and newly found responsibility changed his life forever.

Overwhelming Experiences

Mr. Foley joined Quest Software in 2000 and where he rose to VP of EMEA and grew the European business from $13m to $180m over 5 years. Then Tony became SVP of Global Operations at Quest and was responsible for field execution of the Quest Strategic plan while serving on Senior Management Board. After the Dell acquisition of Quest, Tony joined Software AG as Senior VP and over the next three years Tony leveraged his experience creating business strategy, building teams, growing sales, and serving customers, particularly in the field of business process management. After that successful run, Tony grew revenue at SailPoint Technologies for 2 years as a VP EMEA. Tony also serves as Managing Director at ReachLocal Europe, who take marketing best practices and tailor them to specific vertical markets and localities. With the wide spectrum of effective experiences across decades and technologies, Tony was the perfect fit for the re-boot of Parsec Labs where Tony is in the process of maximizing great Intellectual Property and talented people while calibrating the organization for on-time product delivery, aggressive revenue growth and seamless customer support.

Aligning with Technology

Almost all competitive advantage comes from aligning business with technology. Time to market; build or buy; faster sales execution are just 3 of the outcomes. One of the hardest things to do for Tony has been a struggle to maintain a balance between his professional and personal life. Family and friends, however, remain the most important aspect of his life.

Ensuring Focus with Opportunities

10 years ago there were only a handful of IT shops, with a Petabyte or more of data in the US, Now there are that many & more per major US metro and the number is constantly growing, so Parsec is in early, and Tony needs to ensure focus to keep pace with opportunities. He advises, “Stake employees with equity opportunities which give high morale and achievement as well as transparency and efficiency. Be Clear on Goals and Specific about Revenue Targets”.

“Be clear on goals and specific about revenue targets.”

Tony encourages his employees to never leave a stone unturned. “Business is about creating opportunity and solving the problems that run alongside that opportunity,” says he. He encourages employees to always be building value. “A customer needs to understand how they are going to benefit from doing business with you, and planning,” adds Tony. He does his best to ensure that customers have a robust plan for their own career progression. As Richard Branson points out “Train your people well enough so they can leave. Treat them well enough, so they don’t want to”.

Naturally Gifted Sales Executives

Being a good listener is critical to being a good leader. “It’s almost always your own people who come up with the best ideas. Never ask a team member to do a job you would not be prepared to do. Enjoy and be seen to enjoy what you do. If you don’t, it’s probably time to leave. Energize your employees. Don’t criticize. Be an effective and regular communicator. Celebrate success. Take your job very seriously, but not yourself. And be humble,” says Tony.

Enterprise Data Centers

All-in-one functionality simplifies data migrations in and across Enterprise Data Centers-designed for data portability in the most challenging enterprise use cases at scalechallenge is to align an evolving feature set with the market-part-science, part art.

Purpose-built appliance with full capabilities defines a new solution category-Block and File Migrations regardless of source and destination array brands-Tricky balancing act between OEM partners and Parsec because of our Storage Array Brand Agnosticism-we can be their best friend or worst enemy if a cross-brand large-scale migration is in play.

Motivational Culture and Environment

From a business point of view, Tony considers Vinny Smith to be something of a role model. Vinny is a very successful, driven, and cares about his friends & employees. His sense of fair play and his humility shine through. On a personal note, his role model would be his father. His father has always been hard-working, honest, and selfless. Tony has never heard him say a bad word about anybody. Tony has lived and worked in the United States, several countries in Europe and Latin America over the last 20 years. He has come up through the ranks from a predominantly sales background. His wife is Spanish, and he has four children, two of whom have completed university.

Natural Charisma of Motivating People

Tony is an accomplished and proven leader with a history of building, growing & sustaining businesses in the hi-tech arena. Experience includes living and working in the UK, USA, Spain, & Brazil. Strong leadership skills contribute to great people management results and active participation with many of the largest, most strategic clients.

Tony holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics and Political Science from The University of Sheffield. He has also completed his diploma in financial technology from the University of Oxford.

True Data Portability

Parsec Labs Portability Platform delivers the ability to move data quickly, where you want it, and when you need it. Parsec is the first complete storage portability solution that gives you the freedom to move, copy and keep data anywhere. One tool gives you the ability to migrate structured and unstructured data securely, on-demand. Break free vendor lock-in and dramatically decrease your mitigation project duration and cost.