Former Lotus executive to lead informatics

David Champagne has been named vice president and general manager of Thermo's Informatics business, a provider of laboratory software solutions and services

Thermo Electron reports that David Champagne has been named vice president and general manager of its Informatics business, the provider of laboratory software solutions and services.

Champagne's career includes 13 years at Lotus Development and two roles as chief executive officer for early-stage software companies.

He joined Thermo in April 2003 as director of global services for Informatics and later was promoted to divisional commercial director.

Champagne succeeds Jo Webber, who recently left the company to pursue a long-held desire to return to Europe and spend time sailing the Mediterranean.

"Jo established herself as an industry leader in Lims over the span of her career and we are thankful for her many contributions to Thermo's industry-leading position," said Dan Kelly, president of Thermo's Informatics and Services division.

"We wish her all the best.

"We asked Dave to take over leadership based on his demonstrated success at Thermo, his global management experience and his deep understanding of what it takes to be successful in enterprise software".

On his new role, Champagne commented: "Informatics is a strategic area to Thermo, which has invested in building a market-leading software organisation with an amazing product and service portfolio.

"Our goal is to make a quantum improvement in how customers benefit from software advances to streamline their laboratory business processes and to integrate with their instruments and robotics to create complete, robust solutions.

"With this change in leadership, we will continue to move forward executing our stated vision and plan".

A graduate of the University of Massachusetts with a BS in industrial engineering and an MBA from Bryant University, Champagne built his career in enterprise software organisations.

While at Lotus, which was acquired by IBM during Champagne's tenure, he led a global support and service organisation of over 1200 service professionals that addressed the needs of customers in more than 80 countries.

Prior to joining Thermo, he was president and CEO of ProActivity Software, an early stage venture that provides business process analysis solutions, and, earlier, president and CEO of Upspring Software, a development tools vendor before it was acquired by MKS.

Webber joined Thermo in September 2004 as part of the company's acquisition of InnaPhase, a privately held software company where she had served as chief executive officer since 2002.

She is credited with establishing InnaPhase's strategic vision for vertical-oriented, commercial-off-the-shelf software solutions, in particular for the pharmaceutical industry.

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