National Instruments Names New Vice President of Product Marketing

AUSTIN, Texas, July 28, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- National Instruments (Nasdaq: NATI) today named NI veteran Ajit Gokhale as a new vice president of product marketing effective Aug. 1, 2011. In his new role, Gokhale, who most recently served as the general manager for the NI UK, France, Ireland and Portugal offices, will oversee product marketing for the National Instruments core platforms of data acquisition and instrument control.

"During his 21 years with NI, Ajit has demonstrated tremendous creativity in driving our vision of graphical system design at the business level, in product development and in international sales and marketing," said Dr. James Truchard, president, CEO and co-founder of National Instruments. "Over the years, Ajit has had a successful track record of defining strategic product roadmaps as well as recruiting and developing strong teams."

In 2006, Gokhale took on a general manager position in Europe, where under his leadership his regions delivered record revenues and profits. During his tenure at National Instruments, Gokhale has set strategic direction and influenced product development for key product lines that contributed significant revenues and gross margins to the business. Additionally, he has extensive experience working directly with NI customers to identify and deliver solutions that meet their application needs.

"Since our founding, National Instruments has been a pioneer in instrument control and data acquisition hardware and software to help engineers and scientists research, design and test new products and technologies," Gokhale said. "I am excited to rejoin the product marketing organization, where I can work with our customers to define and deliver the products they need to fuel scientific discovery and engineering innovation."

Gokhale holds a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a published author in several trade journals as well as a member of IEEE; the University of Surrey Industrial Advisory Board; the King's College Industrial Advisory Board; and Young Engineers with Prince Andrew, Duke of York.

About National Instruments

National Instruments (www.ni.com) is transforming the way engineers and scientists design, prototype and deploy systems for measurement, automation and embedded applications. NI empowers customers with off-the-shelf software such as NI LabVIEW and modular cost-effective hardware, and sells to a broad base of more than 30,000 different companies worldwide, with its largest customer representing approximately 4 percent of revenue in 2010 and no one industry representing more than 15 percent of revenue. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, NI has approximately 5,800 employees and direct operations in more than 40 countries. For the past 12 years, FORTUNE magazine has named NI one of the 100 best companies to work for in America. Readers can obtain investment information from the company's investor relations department by calling (512) 683-5090, emailing [email protected] or visiting www.ni.com/nati.

LabVIEW, National Instruments, NI and ni.com are trademarks of National Instruments. Other product and company names listed are trademarks or trade names of their respective companies.

SOURCE National Instruments