Carolan joined ViaWest in 2011 as Vice President Product Development before being promoted to the newly created role of Chief Technology Officer (CTO). As CTO, Carolan is responsible for the strategic direction of all ViaWest products and technology initiatives. Prior to ViaWest, Carolan had nearly 20 years of experience in leadership positions in both small startup companies and large Fortune 100 enterprises, focused on product architecture, product management and technical sales. His previous roles include over 10 years at Sun Microsystems, where he was a Distinguished Engineer in network and systems architecture, focused on cloud computing and data center architectures, and Director of Cloud Services Engineering at VMware. Carolan was the lead author of one of the first books highlighting the combined use of virtualization and automation. He also has several patents in networking, data center resource management, virtualization, and security.