Aha! Management Team

Mark Teflian

Co-founder and CEO

Prior to Aha!, Mark was Executive Vice-president of Global Solutions and Technology for NTT/Verio, where he developed and led the implementation of a global strategy for the company’s businesses, solutions, and technology. Mark was also Founder and President of TimeØ, a subsidiary of Perot Systems, a market-leading company that forged the corporate digital marketplace industry.  As Founder and President of Covia Technologies, a division of Galileo International Corporation, Mark led development and deployment of the Communications Integrator, the leader in the emerging message-oriented middleware industry.

Under Mark’s leadership, Covia Technologies achieved $23 million in revenue from Fortune 500 customers and strategic partners. As SVP and CIO of Covia Partnership (now Travelport), and the youngest-ever VP of United Airlines, Mark played a pivotal role in building and deploying the Apollo Airline Reservation and Global Distribution System, considered one of the world’s most advanced point-of-sale and information analytics platforms. Mark has received many industry awards and has authored numerous white papers and articles,

Peter Gallanis

Co-founder and Chief Architect

Peter Gallanis is Chief Architect of Product architecture, development, and technology. In this role, he is responsible for the overall technical vision of the Aha! Engine.

Peter Gallanis has more than 35 years of information systems experience in a variety of environments and markets, including research, application programming, systems programming, database administration, and design and implementation of enterprise infrastructure projects. Peter has led numerous architectural review, risk assessment and mitigation, application performance design, and production management projects, and has been chief architect for the design and implementation of a J2EE web-based portal used to evaluate the utilization, costs, key performance indicators, and performance of individual components of SaaS products. Peter’s expertise spans a wide range of hardware and operating systems, from mainframe IBM systems to massive parallel processing UNIX-based environments, as well as project and development management.

Before co-founding Aha!, Peter was Chief Performance Analyst at Tanning Technology Corporation, where he performed development, testing, sales, and management roles; and was a key consulting engineer for strategic architecture and research at Galileo International, a leading travel and transportation automation firm. Peter has also held leadership positions at several other companies including Intel, where he supported the commercial sales team during the sales effort for a channel-attached, solid-state paging device, developed tools to predict system performance in an MVS and VM environment when used with the new device, and supported the commercial sales team for a mainframe database management system, and commercial customer accounts during software installation and database design.

Bruce Bacon

Co-founder and Vice President Product Marketing

Bruce Bacon is Vice President of Product Strategy and Management for Aha! In this role, he is responsible for worldwide product strategy and development.

Bruce Bacon has more than 20 years of leadership experience in information technology companies, including roles in product definition, corporate strategy, business development, and marketing. He specializes in the development of new businesses, products, and services, with expertise in the creation of business and product strategies for high technology offerings including emerging e-commerce systems. In leadership positions at NETdelivery, Covia Technologies/Galileo International, BMC Software, and IBM, Bruce has been responsible for managing the success of research and development, sales, and marketing organizations, including application of system emulation and simulation modeling of IT-based systems to improve return on investment and reduce total cost of computing. In addition, as Director of Product Management at CentriMed/GHX, Bruce was responsible for defining all product and service offerings as well as building the strategy and market positioning of each offering for this leading medical device digital marketplace. In that position he coordinated cross-functional schedules and corporate activities to create the company launch including technical development, creative development, support services, quality assurance, marketing, sales, and product management. He also helped lead the company through its acquisition by Global Healthcare Exchange. Bruce has guided creation of knowledge transfer offerings for performance methodologies for high-end consulting organizations, and development of a methodology and approach to align business processes and measurements with IT delivery infrastructures for SaaS-based vendors.

Amir Rakha

Vice President Business Development

Amir Rakha is Vice President of Business Development for Aha! In this role, he is responsible for world-wide partner relationship and development.

Amir has more than 20 years of experience as an information technology professional. Before joining Aha!, Amir was Vice President of Operations for Antenova Ltd, a leading supplier of high-performance antenna solutions for telecommunications applications. In this role Amir had overall responsibility for the design, engineering, and manufacture of all of Antenova’s products, and led Antenova’s transition from a research and development start-up firm to an established product delivery organization. Prior to joining Antenova, Amir was Business Development Manager for IBM Software Group, and Director of Transportation Technologies for Siemens. Amir has also held leadership positions for Covia Technologies/Galileo International, where he was the director responsible for the production, marketing, and sale of transportation-based software applications, and led an international team of more than 50 engineers and developers in creating the Kansai International Airport passenger information system.

Tom Holloran

Vice President Operations and Service Delivery

Tom Holloran is Vice President of Operations and Service Delivery for Aha! In this role he is responsible for the delivery of all Aha! professional services and customer solutions.

Tom brings more than 20 years of experience in the areas of global networks, systems architecture, application development, system performance engineering, and operations. Prior to joining Aha! Tom held executive positions in several technology-leading corporations. As VP of Telecommunications and Engineering for Internet data center startup Relera, he managed backbone and Internet network designs/installations which supported the company’s opening of 11 data centers in 11 weeks. As Senior Vice President of Network Services for The Sabre Group, he led the overwhelmingly successful implementation of US Airways complete network outsourcing. Prior to joining Sabre, Tom held positions in network services, performance engineering, software development, and 24/7 operations for the United Airlines/Covia/Apollo/Galileo companies.

Tom has received several prestigious awards recognizing his accomplishments in analytics. He was as a finalist for the Franz Edelman Prize, awarded annually for the best application of operations research / management science worldwide. He was recognized by United Airlines for innovating a fuel tankering optimization system that served United Airlines for more than 10 years. Tom has also received several awards for his system performance engineering and process optimization innovations.