Lakeside Software Appoints Daniel Salinas as COO to Drive AI-Powered Growth in Digital Employee Experience
Daniel Salinas returns as COO to lead Lakeside Software's expansion, leveraging AI and automation to transform IT from reactive support to proactive business enabler while delivering significant cost savings.
Lakeside Software has appointed Daniel Salinas as Chief Operating Officer, marking his return to the company where he previously served as Vice President of Business Development. Salinas brings over 25 years of enterprise IT leadership experience, including 18 years at IBM in technical, sales, and management roles, and will oversee global Sales, Customer Success, Customer Support, and Business Development functions.
The appointment comes as organizations face increasing pressure to optimize digital employee experience in hybrid work environments. Salinas emphasized that Lakeside is evolving to meet these challenges by shifting IT from reactive support functions toward site reliability engineering principles, focusing on predictability, automation, and resilience. This transformation enables IT teams to proactively address issues rather than react to tickets, delivering the seamless digital experiences employees expect.
Salinas highlighted Lakeside's practical impact through a case study involving a major bank that planned to refresh 7,000 laptops. By analyzing real-world usage data from Lakeside's endpoint sensors, the organization discovered only 600 devices actually required replacement, resulting in approximately $9 million in savings that could be redirected to other projects.
The company's AI and automation capabilities are driving significant productivity gains across enterprises. One organization used Lakeside's technology to prevent more than 205,000 help desk tickets monthly through continuous monitoring, anomaly detection, and automated fixes. This "invisible IT" approach reduces tech friction for end users while delivering measurable outcomes that justify IT investments.
Salinas' leadership philosophy, shaped by his extensive experience and educational background including a Bachelor of Engineering from the University of Michigan and an MBA from the Ross School of Business, focuses on building cross-functional alignment and resilience. He compares leadership challenges to hurdling in track and field, emphasizing the need to coach teams over obstacles rather than avoiding them.
As COO, Salinas aims to scale Lakeside's operations while maintaining customer focus, ensuring the company can grow efficiently without losing sight of customer needs. His return signals Lakeside's commitment to leveraging AI and edge observability to help IT departments transform from behind-the-scenes functions into strategic business heroes that demonstrate clear value through productivity improvements and cost savings.