"I had too much on my plate and realized that there are people out there with more time who know more than me for this job," Convergence President Dave Levine said. "I'm honored to have the opportunity to bring Erik aboard to join Convergence Inc. as his knowledge and experience provide an invaluable component to the company as we continue to grow."
Van Riper is a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, and comes from an extensive and varied background in business development, especially in the area of streaming Internet media, ASP infrastructures and web-based customer relationship management.
He comes to Convergence from business resource provider Kintera, where he successfully guided operations for the private company and took it public. This involved obtaining Sarbanes-Oxley compliance and developing a multiyear growth plan. He also was responsible for all aspects of security for the Kintera constituents relationship management (CRM) platform.
Van Riper held positions at Internet delivery solutions provider Akamai/INTERVU, leading a team that built the first globally distributed broadband content delivery network (CDN) for streaming media.
In addition, Van Riper developed innovative ways to monitor systems and applications form hundreds of servers deployed all over the world.
His background includes also running information technology for gaming company Midway Home Entertainment and providing voice-overs for their video games.
Van Riper also was involved in physical chemistry research at the City University of New York College for low temperature/high resolution spectroscopy, as well as research in open-source initiatives. As an early adopter of Linux and writing server code, Van Riper contributed to the development of the video game "Go."
The announcement of Van Riper’s hiring follows closely on the heels of SexToy.com's redesign and relaunch of the flagship website in late November.
