Ray Downes

Ray Downes was Chief Executive Officer of Kemp from 2012 to 2021. During his time at Kemp, he oversaw the transformation of the company from niche load balancing/application delivery product into category leadership of the rapidly growing “Application Experience” (AX) market. Throughout this period, the company grew from > $10M to over $70M annual revenues and from 30 employees to over 300, completing two acquisitions along the way (Flowmon Networks & Lithops).

Ray initially joined the company in 2010 to work with the founders. He was elevated to CEO in early 2012 following a change in ownership to a consortium of expansion stage Venture Capital firms. In 2019 Kemp was acquired by Mill Point Capital, a New York based private equity firm focusing on strategic and operational enhancement of strong, profitable, growth companies. In November 2021, it was announced by Progress Software (NASDAQ: PRGS) that they had completed the acquisition of Kemp for $258M all-cash deal. Progress provides a suite of products to develop, deploy and manage high-impact business applications.

Prior to Kemp, Ray held several executive leadership positions including with global networking technology companies like Cabletron Systems and Enterasys Networks. From 2002-2010, Ray co-founded Arrosys, a European-based Sales & Marketing consultancy which specialized in efficiently launching expansion stage technology companies into European Sales markets. Educated in his native Ireland at the Limerick Institute of Technology, Ray and his wife Janet reside on Long Island, New York.