Devfarm Software was founded in 2008 by 15 year software veterans and Quest Software alumnus Brian Butler and Ben Vierck with the vision of building products to simplify and automate the daily activities of IT administrators.

Devfarm Software’s flagship product, PowerWF Studio delivers on this dream by leveraging Windows Workflow Foundation and PowerShell to innovate in the Administration, Virtualization, and Monitoring spaces.

Key People

Brian Butler

Brian Butler is the President and CEO of Devfarm Software Corporation.

Before co-founding Devfarm Software in 2008, Brian worked in Merger and Acquisitions as Director of Corporate Development for Quest Software where his primary focus was technical due-diligence. Brian helped shape Quest Software’s virtualization product family direction through identifying key acquisitions, market trends, and business opportunities.

Brian served several years as Director of Software Development for Quest Software in St. Louis. His staff developed Benchmark Factory and a number of plug-ins for Foglight, Quest Software’s enterprise monitoring solution, including the Foglight Transaction Recorder.

Brian and most of his development staff from Client/Server Solutions were acquired by Quest Software in April of 2000. Brian founded Client/Server Solutions in 1994 and went on to create the award winning Benchmark Factory. In 1997 Brian hired Jim Hofer to help bring Benchmark Factory to market.

Brian got his start in Information Technology as a Technical Editor for DBMS Magazine and spent the early 90’s as a contributing editor for PC Magazine. Brian contributed to PCWeek, Corporate Computing, and DBMS Magazine. Brian wrote the PC Magazine, PCWeek, and Corporate Computing benchmarks.

Brian holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Univerisity of Missouri – Rolla.

Follow on Twitter @brian_butler

Ben Vierck

Ben Vierck is the CTO and Chief Architect of Devfarm Software Corporation.

Before co-founding Devfarm Software in 2008, Ben worked as a Development Manager at Quest Software. Ben was the software architecture and development management for Quest Software’s QMP for Oracle product from 2006 to 2008. Ben served as interim Product Manager for QMP for Oracle as the product transitioned from the proof-of-concept stage to a released product. Ben was a senior software developer on the Foglight Transaction Recorder and Benchmark Factory products lines.

Prior to joining Quest, Ben owned Riologic, a software development and consulting company. Ben founded Riologic in 1998 to create manufacturing system software. Riologics manufacturing automation systems products included MTAPP and eJob.

Ben started his career as a Software Test Engineer at Microsoft Corporation. Ben worked primarily for the Build group on the Windows Base team from the release of Windows 4.0 through Windows 2000.

Follow on Twitter @xcud

Jim Hofer

Jim Hofer is the CIO and Vice President of Business Development for Devfarm Software.

Before joining Devfarm software, Jim Hofer was one of the architects for Quest Software’s vFoglight product line where he designed and implemented much of the original vFoglight user interface, including the vmExplorer, monitoring, and capacity planning dashboards. Jim managed the vFoglight user interface team though September 2009.

In his 9 year career with Quest Software, Jim served various roles including Product Manager, Software Development Manager, Quality Assurance Manager, Senior Software Developer, and Senior Product Specialist. Before Client/Server Solutions was acquired by Quest, Jim worked with Brian Butler, where Jim served as Vice President of Product Management. Jim directed all external facing aspects of the award winning Benchmark Factory, including product marketing, sales, technical support, and documentation.

Prior to his career with Quest, Jim designed, built and supported human-machine interface software for packaging line software for Anheuser-Busch.

Jim holds a Master of Science in Agricultural Engineering and a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Missouri, Columbia. Jim’s thesis focused on adaptive temperature control of the food extrusion process.

Follow on Twitter @ihunger