Omneon, a leading provider of media server and active storage systems, today announced the appointment of Niels Thomas as vice president of sales for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. In this role, Thomas will be responsible for managing EMEA business for Omneon, including sales and channel strategy, market expansion, and management of the company’s U.K. offices.

“Thomas is a proven leader, and he joins us at an exciting time,” said Dan Marshall, senior vice president of worldwide sales at Omneon. “His diverse and strong background in the broadcast, media, and entertainment industries will extend our reach in the important EMEA market and we’re looking forward to his contributions.”

Thomas joins Omneon from Sony, where he was general manager for direct sales within the broadcast and professional products division for the last five years and also was responsible for broadcast equipment sales from 1988 to 2000. In between the Sony assignments, he was sales director at Grass Valley™ and Thomson. In that role he drove significant growth for the broadcast products division. Before that, Thomas was with EMC Computer Corporation for the start of their media division, merging IT with broadcast technology. Thomas started his broadcast career in 1975 after college with a two-year engineering assignment in South Africa that turned into 13 years in television engineering, including a role as senior engineer for the South Africa Broadcasting Corporation.

Thomas will be based in the U.K. and will report to Marshall.

About Omneon
Omneon is a leading provider of flexible media server and active storage systems that optimize workflow productivity and on-air reliability for the production, distribution, and management of digital media. Omneon is a pioneer in the use of advanced IT technologies and open systems for broadcast applications, producing a modular and expandable video server architecture in the Omneon Spectrum. The company's MediaGrid active storage system delivers centralized content storage that is scalable in capacity, bandwidth, and media-processing power. The company has an extensive global presence with customers in 45 countries on six continents. Omneon is on the Web at www.Omneon.com.

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