Board of Directors

Klaus Besier
Chief Executive Officer

Klaus Besier has been the CEO of RES Software since 2010 and has served on its board since 2009. Mr. Besier is responsible for all aspects of RES Software’s global business and corporate strategy and brings to his position significant software industry experience and a proven track record of driving top line growth.

Mr. Besier previously built and led the strategic direction of global software leader SAP America, Inc. as President and CEO. Under his leadership, SAP Americas grew from $50 million to $1 billion in revenues in less than five years. Following SAP, Mr. Besier served as President and CEO of Firepond Inc., which he took public in one of the most successful IPOs in 2000. As President and CEO of Neoware, Inc., Mr. Besier drove significant growth and visibility, key factors that resulted in its acquisition by HP in 2007 with a total transaction value greater than $300 million. Most recently, Mr. Besier was the CEO of Pramata.

In addition to his work with RES Software, Mr. Besier serves on the boards of two private companies, Pramata, Inc. and ICG Commerce.

James Socas
Outside Director
General Partner of Updata

Mr. Socas is based in the Reston, Virginia office.  

Mr. Socas previously served as Senior Vice President and Head of Corporate Development at Symantec – the global security software leader, leading Symantec's mergers & acquisitions practice, corporate venture investing, and strategic, financial and technology alliances.  He conceived, negotiated and executed Symantec's highly publicized international joint venture with Huawei Technologies, one of China's leading technology companies, and drove the successful billion dollar acquisition of systems management leader Altiris, as well as several other major corporate acquisitions.  Prior to Symantec, Mr. Socas was a Managing Director in Credit Suisse First Boston's technology group and spent fifteen years in investment banking, where he worked with many of the leading enterprise and consumer software companies on M&A, initial public offerings, capital raising and restructuring.

Mr. Socas serves on the board of the Potomac School and the non-profit Project Match, and he was appointed to serve on Virginia's Board of Corrections.  He is a graduate of the Harvard Business School and the University of Virginia.

Richard Erickson
Outside Director
General Partner of Updata

Mr. Erickson brings over 25 years of experience in public and private application development,  systems integration, and software companies.

Mr. Erickson started his career with one of the TCP/IP Internet network pioneers, Excelan (EXLN-Nasdaq) where he participated in the company's growth, IPO, and ultimate sale to Novell (NOVL-Nasdaq). From 1987 to 1997, as one of the founders of Digital Network Associates, a privately held managed services provider and systems integrator, he guided the company through its growth and  sale to United States Office Products (OFIS-Nasdaq).

In 1999, Mr. Erickson joined iXL Enterprises (IIXL-Nasdaq), one of the leading public Internet Consulting firms as EVP of Operations. Post driving iXL’s merger with it’s public peer Scient (SCNT-Nasdaq), in 2001 he joined Updata Partner’s Portfolio Company, AlphaNet Solutions as  President and CEO. Two years after he joined  AlphaNet (ALPH-Nasdaq) was successfully exited in a  sale to Ciber (CBR-NYSE) in mid  2003.  After the successful transition to Ciber, Mr. Erickson joined Updata Partners in 2004. Mr. Erickson holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Villanova University.

Bob Janssen
Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer

Bob Janssen is the co-founder and Chief Technical Officer of RES Software. He has been responsible for product vision, strategy and development at RES Software since co-founding the company in 1999 and acts as the most prominent RES Software spokesperson at industry events. He was instrumental in the creation of the RES Software flagship products, RES Workspace Manager and RES Automation Manager, released in 1999 and 2005, respectively. During his tenure, RES Software has sold well over one million licenses worldwide and his development team has issued more than 10 major releases. Mr. Janssen also holds several patents for the solutions he has developed at RES Software such as the 2010 patent for reverse seamless technology featured in RES Virtual Desktop Extender and other patents dating back to  2003 .

Prior to founding RES Software, Mr. Janssen worked in several IT departments where he faced the day to day struggles of managing corporate desktops and delivering IT to users. This firsthand understanding inspired him to create products that solve the problems experienced by IT professionals on a regular basis and to coin the term “Workspace Management”. Bob worked as a System Administrator and later as a Software Developer building pragmatic software solutions using the eXtreme Programming (XP) methodology for Air Liquide, and as an Information Architect for Schenker, where he modeled, designed and supervised the construction of system and enterprise-level application solutions. He holds a Business Computing degree from the Fontys University of Applied Sciences.