Pace Micro Promotes Chris Dinallo to VP of Technology; Steve Payne Appointed Director of Operations & Finance

Boca Raton, Fla., Oct. 13/Satnews Daily/ — Pace Micro Technology has appointed Chris Dinallo to a newly formed position of VP of Technology while Steve Payne has joined the company as Director of Operations & Finance. Based in Boca Raton, Fla., both executives report will directly to Mike Pulli, president of Pace Americas.

Pulli said Chris has shown remarkable vision and knowledge of where the industry's technology is heading. “He will lead Pace's technical strategy for the U.S. market going forward including OCAP and NGNA initiatives," he said.

Steve Payne's business skills coupled with his strong background in finance, operations and customer service in high growth markets, such as telecommunications, are the perfect match to help lead our operations and finance initiatives as we move to expand our footprint in the U.S. market, Pulli added. 

Chris Dinallo joined Pace in 2001 as Chief Technologist to focus on U.S. cable digital set-top box development. In his position, Chris will continue his previous responsibilities of technological directions for set-top box development, which include following industry standards, such as SCTE, OCAP and emerging NGNA initiatives.  In addition, Chris joins the Pace Americas executive team involved with on-going business, new business development and direct technical point of contact for MSOs.

Prior to Pace, Chris was Engineering Director at Netspeak Corporation, a Voice over IP (VoIP) software provider. Earlier in his career, Chris was the Software Engineering Director and Site Manager at Oak Technology's Software Design Center, and held various senior engineering roles at IBM.

Since 1984, Chris' engineering disciplines have been in the areas of operating systems, multimedia subsystems, MPEG video, DVD, and Voice over IP developments. Highlights of Chris' career include many of the world's first innovations such as: the rotational firmware for the world's first 2 ½" disk drive; co-developing the IBM DOS kernel that surpassed the 640KB memory barrier; audio architect of IBM's OS/2 Multimedia Subsystem; multimedia architect for the object-oriented subsystem residing beneath the Taligent OS; Dynamic boot-loader of the MACH microkernel as implemented in IBM's Workplace OS; world's first 32bit software-only DVD 1.0 compliant playback system built for personal computers; and development of telephony 'soft-switches' for VoIP initiatives using H.323, MGCP and SIP protocols.

Chris is a Computer Science graduate from the University of Florida and holds four U.S. patents in the multimedia/DVD arena. He has also written numerous white papers for industry trade publications, including the more recent digital-cable related articles as published in CED and Communication Technologies magazines. Chris is an advocate of employing open standards and Linux initiatives for set-top box developments. 

As Director of Operations & Finance, Steve is responsible for all operational aspects of the company, including field services, finance, customer service, product delivery, logistics, warehouse management and material purchasing.  Steve is also responsible for facilities management, as well as indirect ownership of IT infrastructure.

Prior to joining Pace, Steve compiled an extensive background in sales operations, engineering and project management, primarily in the telecommunications space. Most recently, he was the Director of Operations for Qwest Communications, focusing on global accounts. While at Qwest, his organization was responsible for managing and supporting over $50 million in annual revenues. He also held regional engineering and operations positions at Qwest and MCI.

Steve received his bachelor's degree in Business Administration from Campbell University and is in process of completing his MBA.