"The Valaran board of directors enthusiastically support Rhonda's appointment as Chairman in recognition of her significant contributions to the company over the past year," said Darrell Jenings, CEO of Valaran Corporation, as Valaran announced the appointment of Rhonda Hocker (pictured), senior vice president and chief information officer of BEA Systems, as Chairman of Valaran's board of directors.

Hocker begins her non-executive chairman role after having served as a director with the company since August 2004.

"I am very excited about the opportunity to serve as Valaran's board chairman," said Hocker. "Event processing, transaction and device management, and integration of any edge networked device represents a new frontier of IT. Valaran provide solutions that are designed to meet the associated IT challenges of this new frontier, and I look forward to working with them in support of this market opportunity."

As CIO of BEA, Hocker is responsible for the development and execution of the BEA information technology strategy which focus on deploying Internet business solutions and highly integrated enterprise business solutions. She also defines future IT architecture and system infrastructure for the company.

Prior to joining BEA, Hocker was vice president of ERP implementation and supply chain reengineering at Agilent Technologies, Inc. She also worked at HP for 15 years where she held several management roles within information technology management, high technology manufacturing and distribution and personal computer supply chain management.