Accel hires Paul Wahl for corporate IT investments

Technology venture capital firm Accel Partners, whose investments include Facebook and Macromedia, has hired ex-SAP and Siebel executive Paul Wahl to strengthen its enterprise IT business. As CEO-in-residence, Wahl will identify, invest in and mentor start-ups that help organisations to reduce the complexity of their IT infrastructure, Accel said on Monday.

"We can't keep building software that can only be maintained by armies of IT specialists. We have to reduce IT complexity within the enterprise," Wahl said in a statement. Wahl has worked with Accel on past investments including as a board member at Qliktech, one of Europe's most successful venture capital investments, which went public on the Nasdaq last year. Wahl ran the American business of German business software giant SAP in the late 1990s and went on to become chief operating officer of customer relationship management software company Siebel, which has since been bought by Oracle.