VISUAL NUMERICS

Phil Fraher

Visual Numerics, a San Ramon provider of numerical analysis and visualization software, promoted Phil Fraher to chief operating officer. Fraher joined the company as executive vice president of North America Operations in 2002. In his new position, he will have overall responsibility for sales, marketing, finance, human resources and research and development worldwide.

Fraher held a similar position at Brightmail, a venture-backed Bay Area start-up company, where he raised venture capital funding. He was also responsible for leading the company's expansion efforts into Europe and Asia Pacific markets.

BUSINESS ENGINE

John O'Neil George Van Ness

John O'Neil is stepping down as chairman and chief executive officer of Business Engine, to be replaced by George Van Ness. Van Ness had been president and chief operating officer since 1999. O'Neil will continue in an advisory role during the transition. The San Francisco start-up company is a provider of enterprise project portfolio management software applications.

VICE PRESIDENTS

Appointees

Privately held Optiva of South San Francisco, creator of a new class of nanomaterials for optical applications, appointed Joan Varrone vice president of finance and chief financial officer. Varrone comes with years of broad experience in a range of high-tech environments including previously serving as senior vice president and CFO for Food.com.

ViewCentral of Mountain View appointed Rosie Hausler vice president of marketing and Greg McLemore vice president of sales.

Before joining the company, Hausler held senior marketing management positions at public and start-ups companies including CallTheShots, Tandem Computers, Cisco Systems, Junglee, Amazon.com, Liller Neal Advertising and PR, The Atlanta Journal and Constitution Newspapers and Dataman Information Services.

McLemore has been with the company for three years in sales and business development roles, most recently he served as director of sales. Before that, he served as director of the business solutions group for the Americas at Baan.

CloudShield Technologies, Sunnyvale developer of high-speed packet servers, appointed Richard Bibb vice president of sales. Bibb brings years of executive management and sales leadership experience in communications.