Michael Helfrich

Vice President of Applied Technology, Groove Networks

Michael Helfrich is vice president of applied technology responsible for managing a worldwide team of pre-sales systems engineers, and for working closely with visionary customers in their application of Groove products and other emerging technologies. Previously, Michael served as the company's director of business development, cultivating and working closely with early adopter customers. He joined Groove Networks in January 2000.

Michael has more than 12 years of experience in the software and network communications markets. Prior to joining Groove Networks, Michael was the director of product development in the Knowledge Management Products Group at Lotus Development Corporation. He was a key contributor to Lotus/IBM's knowledge management (KM) market strategy and drove the development of specific KM products, solution offerings, and services. He joined Lotus in 1996 as the lead architect for the Notes Public Networks group in Lotus' professional services group. In this role, he developed a technical and business blueprint that enabled 11 of the world's largest telecommunications companies to bring massively scalable hosted Notes and Domino infrastructures to enterprise markets in France, UK, Italy, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Germany, Australia, and the United States.

Before Lotus, he was a management consultant with Coopers & Lybrand (C&L) Consulting in Cambridge, Massachusetts where he provided strategy consulting to multiple US Department of Defense and intelligence organizations. He also served in the firm's CKO office in New York City and was selected to serve as chief technologist for one of Vice President Al Gore's reinventing government initiatives in 1994.

Michael began his career in 1989 when he opened the Boston office for USConnect.