Mitch Holyoak -- Promoted to Head Up Sorenson Media's Salt Lake Office

Today, we at Sorenson Media announce that online video expert/pioneer Mitch Holyoak has been promoted to head up our Salt Lake City office, which acts primarily as our development nerve center for our core compression, Squeeze Desktop, and Squeeze Server products and technology.

Mitch has seen it all at Sorenson Media -- and has been with the company throughout all of its various incarnations since the late '90's.  First, as a core codec technology company.  Then, and until late 2005, Sorenson Media was primarily focused on the VRS business -- "video relay services" (live video communications) for the hearing impaired and deaf community.  Sorenson Media, during this time, made hardware boxes and operated services for such live communications.  The vast majority of Sorenson Media's assets were spun out in late 2005 in what to this day is the largest private equity deal in Utah history.  It was a massive success for all -- and Mitch was in the thick of it.

After this spin-out, Sorenson Media eventually became the company that it is today -- focused on developing and offering the broadest range of high quality and flexible video workflow/transcoding solutions.  The remaining assets of the company were augmented by a new significant investment in R&D led by Mitch.  In other words, Sorenson Media essentially was a new VC-styled start-up beginning in 2008; our new management team -- including myself -- came on board in very early 2009 to lead this start-up.  Mitch has been my "go to" guy on the core development side ever since.

Mitch is undoubtedly one of the foremost experts in video compression/encoding/transcoding in the world today.  He has lived, eaten and breathed this "stuff" longer than just about anyone.  He is rock solid.  He is dedicated.  He is a man of his word.  He is quiet.  He is thoughtful.  He is humble.

He is an all-around great guy.

It is an honor to work with him -- and this feeling is shared by literally everyone at Sorenson Media.

I congratulate him -- well-deserved; long overdue.