What's the storage
market about?
A lot of it is about
SSDs,
HDDs,
chips, and the
boxes they go in and the
interfaces and
software which enable
them do something useful. There's plenty of
news and stuff about
those things elsewhere on STORAGEsearch.com.
But here, on this particular page, it's news about key people. Follow
the storage people trail (or the
money) and you might
be able to guess what their new companies will do next. |
| news about key
people
in the storage market |
Former Intel Storage
Executive Joins Atempo Board
Palo Alto, Calif -
April 8, 2008 - Atempo, Inc. today announced that storage industry
veteran Michael V. Wall has joined its board of directors.
Mr. Wall was a founding member of the management team that developed Intel's
storage business where he worked closely with many of the multi-national OEMs
that manufacture and distribute servers, workstations, and storage solutions.
Prior to joining Intel, Mr. Wall served as a GM responsible for North American
Operations at Cray
Research. ...Atempo
profile
Index Engines Names New VP of Sales
Holmdel, NJ -
April 1, 2008 - Index Engines today announced the appointment of Tony
Fusarelli as VP of Sales.
Fusarelli is a seasoned executive
with over 25 years of experiencey.
Recently, Fusarelli served as VP of sales for
Tacit Networks,
which was purchased by Packeteer as a result of its success. Prior to Tacit
Networks Fusarelli was VP of Sales at Lumeta
where he was responsible for tripling the company's revenue in less than 2
years. Fusarelli has also held executive sales positions at
Visara International,
General
Signal Networks and INRANGE
Technologies.
...Index Engines
profile
CAS Pioneers Reunited at Caringo
AUSTIN, Texas
- March 18, 2008 - Caringo Inc. today announced the hiring of Jan
Van Riel as its VP of Advanced Technology, reuniting him with fellow
co-founder of Content Addressable Storage, Paul Carpentier, Caringo's
CTO.
Van Riel and Carpentier together invented the technology
that created the CAS industry while they were partners at
FilePool,
a company they sold to EMC
(in April 2001).
EMC went on to incorporate the CAS concept into its multimillion-dollar Centera
and Van Riel served 8 years as EMC's Director of Technology. ..Caringo profile
SMART Completes Acquisition of Adtron
FREMONT, CA - March 4,
2008 - SMART Modular Technologies, Inc. announced that it has closed
its acquisition of privately-held Adtron Corp.
"Combining
our strengths with Adtron, with its technical expertise, product portfolio, and
customer base, immediately expands our non-DRAM business and complements our
existing
SSD business. Together, we offer the
SSD market, especially the
Enterprise Storage SSD market, a broader range of high performing, rugged, and
reliable storage solutions," said
Iain
MacKenzie, President and CEO of SMART.
In connection with the acquisition,
Alan Fitzgerald,
founder of Adtron, joins SMART as VP and CTO, Flash Products, and Robert
Benkendorf joins SMART as VP and GM, SSD Products. The acquisition was an
all-cash transaction of approximately $20 million with up to an additional $15
million should certain calendar year 2008 financial and operational performance
goals be achieved.
...Adtron profile,
...SMART Modular
Technologies profile
Kirk Roller Joins iSCSI Wannabe Wasabi
Norfolk, Virginia -
February 19, 2008 - Wasabi Systems today announced that Kirk Roller
has joined its ranks as Senior VP, Worldwide Sales and Marketing.
Formerly
President and COO of Emulex,
Kirk's extensive background in the storage industry helped put Emulex on the map
while boosting Fibre Channel
HBA revenues from $3M to over $400M.
Kirk brings more than 20
years of executive management expertise to Wasabi's executive team and is
excited about the opportunities in the
iSCSI market and is
looking forward to partnering with leading resellers to reach a market that is
presently growing over 100% each year.
Prior to Emulex, Kirk held various sales and management positions
with Compaq, Interconnections, and Thomas-Conrad. He is presently based in
Wasabi's newly opened Dallas sales office. ...Wasabi Systems profile,
Storage People
Jim Wayda Joins iStor Networks
IRVINE, Calif - January 16, 2008 -
iStor Networks, Inc. today announced that Jim Wayda, a 20 year
veteran in the data storage industry, has assumed the role of VP of Software
Engineering.
Prior to joining iStor, Jim (who has 12 patents
pending in the areas of snapshot and data replication) held positions as Chief
Software Architect and VP of Software Engineering with
Dot Hill Systems.
There, he was responsible for the architecture of high performance Snapshot,
Volume Copy, Data Replication and Disaster Recovery services. In this role, he
managed the delivery of embedded and host-based storage subsystem software to
OEM customers such as Sun
Microsystems. Wayda was also responsible for the delivery of SVApath
multi-path fail-over software to
StorageTek.
Jim's experience also includes senior level positions for the
architecture of storage products for
DEC,
Distributed
Logic Corp,
Plessey
Peripheral Systems, and
Transitional
Technology.
"I'm excited and honored to be joining iStor as the company
is well recognized in the industry as one of the leading
iSCSI storage vendors,"
said Jim Wayda. "IT managers are faced with real challenges in managing
their storage environments and I am looking forward to building the next
generation of network and storage management capabilities for iStor's
integraStor product
family."
...iStor profile
Solid Data Systems Names New CTO
SANTA CLARA,
Calif - November 26, 2007 - Solid Data Systems, Inc. today announced
the promotion of SSD solutions expert Mark Hayashida to the position of
Chief Technology Officer.
In this role, Mr. Hayashida will head
the growing Professional Services Organization, integral to the company's
strategic initiative to bring greater awareness and knowledge of SSD
architecture and benefits to market. A veteran of Solid Data for 9 years,
Hayashida oversees all pre-sales engineering, and is responsible for insuring
effective customer architecture solutions.
"Mark is the
industry's leading architect in the use of
SSDs and has designed
innovative architectures for leading Fortune 500 companies, including AT&T,
Charles Schwab and Southern Company," said Wade Tuma, CEO of Solid Data. "Mark
has the expertise to quickly evaluate and optimize systems to take cost
effective advantage of the benefits of SSD technology. Mark is the author of
many of our technical
whitepapers and brings great depth and knowledge to the team."
Hayashida's appointment follows the growing industry trend of
replacing large RAID arrays
with SSD arrays in core, high transaction rate applications. With the
ever-increasing transaction rates in applications for ecommerce and online
transaction processing such as Internet banking, online insurance, real-time
billing and electronic trading, enterprises find SSDs provide cost-effective,
terabyte-scale storage for fast access and data manipulation of large databases.
SSD-based architectures also provide greater power efficiency for today's "green"
world, due to the fact that SSD arrays themselves use substantially less power
than traditional RAID arrays, as well as enabling substantial server
consolidation.
...Solid Data Systems
profile, Storage People
Nirvanix Expands Exec Team
SAN DIEGO - November 19, 2007 -
Nirvanix today announced the hiring of industry veterans Major
Horton as CFO, Jonathan Buckley as Chief Marketing Officer and Michael
Landesman as VP of IT and Data Center Operations.
"Our
ability to attract top talent to the Nirvanix management team is a clear
indication that we have already achieved an emerging leadership position in the
industry and that there is tremendous business potential in delivering our
innovative Storage Delivery Network to businesses and developers around the
world," said Nirvanix CEO Patrick Harr.
Horton previously served
as the Senior Vice President and CFO of Rackspace Managed Hosting, where he was
responsible for all finance, IT, procurement and change management functions at
the $225 million Internet services company. Prior to Rackspace, Horton held a
variety of Vice President posts at Dell Financial Services.
Buckley
comes to Nirvanix from
PowerFile where he
served as the company's VP of Marketing. Before that as the VP of Marketing for
the software, internetworking and blade switch businesses lines at
McDATA, Buckley's
efforts resulted in a turnaround and 50% year-over-year growth of those business
lines.
Landesman brings more than 20 years of infrastructure and data
center management expertise to Nirvanix. For the past decade, he has held senior
leadership roles overseeing data center operations for Exodus Communications
(acquired by) Cable & Wireless (acquired by) Savvis and Rackspace Managed
Hosting.
...Nirvanix profile,
online backup and storage,
Storage People
Plasmon Names New CEO
Cambridge, UK - November 13, 2007 - Plasmon
today announced the appointment ofSteven Murphy to the position of CEO
effective today.
Murphy, a seasoned executive with more than 20
years of experience in the storage and systems management industry will be based
in the U.S. to drive the roll-out of Plasmon's UDO2 based Archive Appliance.
As president and CEO of
Softek he led the
company¹s change from a niche player to a market leader and led the
management buyout of Softek from Fujitsu Ltd. to its acquisition by IBM in
January 2007. Prior to founding Softek, Mr. Murphy was president of Amdahl
Software, Inc. as well as holding executive roles in the enterprise software and
telecommunications industries, including Andersen Consulting....Plasmon profile,
Storage People
Editor's
comments:- looks like Plasmon has acquired a CEO who could help them get
acquired.
Sun Storage VP New CEO at Mendocino Software
FREMONT, Calif - November
6, 2007 - Mendocino Software today announced that Kathleen Holmgren,
a former top storage executive at Sun Microsystems, has been named the
company's new President and CEO succeeding Steve Colman who now takes
over as Chairman.
Holmgren joins Mendocino after more than 2 decades at Sun where she
most recently was Senior VP of Sun's Disk Systems Business and played a key role
in Sun's integration of
StorageTek.
Holmgren also formed the original Storage Product Group at Sun and grew it into
a major strategic business for the company. She graduated with highest honors
with a Bachelors of Science degree in Engineering from California Polytechnic
State University San Luis Obispo and an MBA from Stanford University. ...Mendocino profile,
...Sun profile,
...Sun
bio (2002) - Kathleen Holmgren,
Storage People
Storage PR Agency of the Year 2007
Editor:- October 29, 2007 - STORAGEsearch.com
today named A3 Communications - Storage PR Agency of the Year 2007.
The
award recognizes the outstanding quality of client-editor interface by A3
Communications in the past year.
"I work with thousands of
content contributors" said STORAGEsearch.com's Editor Zsolt Kerekes. "Effective PR Agencies
are a helpful tool in getting the right content to my readers. Sometimes I'll
miss the significance of a news
story when I see it first time round on my screen. Follow up from
intelligent agencies which understand the market can sometimes make me
reevaluate my snap decisions. PRs who respond quickly to requests for follow
up info - help me, their clients and readers. Many other agencies do all those
things too - but this year the work of Federica Monsone
founder of A3 Communications
was outstanding."
In 2005 the award was given to
JPR Communications. In 2006 no award was
made, because although the overall quality of PRs in the industry had risen, the
"best" was too close to call between several agencies.
RAID Pioneer Targets RAID's Present Day
Unreliability
FREMONT, CA - October
9, 2007 - Panasas, Inc. announced the Panasas Tiered Parity
Architecture which the company claims is the most significant extension to disk
array data reliability since Panasas CTO Garth Gibson's pioneering RAID
research at UC-Berkeley in 1988.
"The challenges with storage
system reliability today have little to do with overall disk reliability, which
is what RAID was designed to address in 1988. The issues that we see today are
directly related to disk density and require new approaches. Most secondary disk
failures today are the result of media errors, which have become 250x more
likely to occur during a RAID failed-disk rebuild over the last 10 years,"
said Garth Gibson, CTO of Panasas. "Tiered Parity allows us to tackle media
errors with an architecture that can counter the effects of increasing disk
density. It also solves data path reliability challenges beyond those addressed
by traditional RAID and extends parity checking out to the client or server
node. Tiered Parity provides the only end-to-end data integrity checking
capability in the industry." ...Panasas profile
Editor's
comments:- the problem of data corruption in large data sets because of
obsolete technology assumptions built into hard disks, interface and RAID
products has been looming for several years. You can see articles and research
about this on the storage
reliability page.
Is the solution more reliable hard drives?
better interfaces? or a smarter storage OS? Users can't wait another 5 years
for ideal solutions because the symptoms are there today when you look. The
Panasas solution sounds like a pragmatic tactical approach for some customers -
but the industry is a long way from a better storage reliability mousetrap.
Dataram Names New UK Country Manager
Editor:- September 28, 2007 -
Dataram Corp announced its new UK Country Manager, Mark Scarlett.
Mark will be based in Dataram's new Harrow (UK) offices and can be
contacted by phone on +44 (0)20 8861 8336.
Some of his past roles
have included:- 5 years as New Business Account Manager at
Just Rams plc, and before that Mark
worked for UK VAR Summit Technologies selling servers and workstations to
the financial district in the City of London. ...Dataram profile,
Storage People,
RAM
New Head for SteelEye
Palo Alto,
California - September 24, 2007 - SteelEye Technology today named Garrett
V. Gafke as President and Chief Operating Officer.
Gafke
joins SteelEye from RFID technology company
SeeControl where, as President and
CEO he expanded the customer base to 22 countries following a management buyout
from Cardinal Health Company. Prior to
Cardinal, Gafke held VP and senior executive roles with
HP, VeriFone, CyberSource,
Xuma, and Trintech
where he has been responsible for 2 IPOs and 3 acquisitions.
...SteelEye profile,
Backup Software,
Storage People
Nexsan Names New Senior VP of Marketing
THOUSAND OAKS, California - September 13,
2007 - Nexsan Technologies announced today that storage and technology
industry veteran Bob Woolery has joined the company in the newly created
position of Senior VP of Marketing.
Mr. Woolery
brings to Nexsan more than 2 decades of experience as a senior executive in
marketing, product management and business development working with a range of
storage and software companies. Mr. Woolery most recently served as Executive
VP of Market Development at Valumation Software, a subsidiary of
Imperial Technology.
He previously served as Vice President of Product Marketing at
Data Direct Networks
and VP of Product Marketing at
XIOtech.
...Nexsan profile,
Storage People
Editor's
comments:- Nexsan was one of the pioneers of
disk to disk backup.
See
also:- article:- a
Short History of Disk to Disk Backup
EMC Names Louise O'Brien Exec VP
Corporate Strategy
Hopkinton,
Mass - September 6, 2007 -
EMC Corp today announced that Louise O'Brien has joined the
company as Executive VP, Corporate Strategy and Development.
O'Brien
will report to Joe Tucci, EMC Chairman, President and CEO, and be responsible
for overseeing EMC's corporate strategy, mergers and acquisitions, Office of the
CTO, and New Ventures Group. |
| O'Brien,
47, joins EMC from her own consulting practice, which she established after
spending more than 7 years with
Dell where she held
several senior management positions including Vice President of Corporate
Strategy and Business Development. She also served as Partner at
Bain & Company, the global business
consulting firm, and led the firm's Customer Loyalty Practice. She holds an MBA
from Harvard Business School.
...EMC profile |
 | |
|
ONStor
Secures Another $27 million Funding
CAMPBELL, Calif - August 1,
2007 -
ONStor today announced it has closed a $27 million mezzanine round of
funding.
New investor Sand Hill Capital joins existing investors
Foundation Capital, Mayfield Fund, ComVentures, and Worldview Technology
Partners to support ONStor in this final round of funding. The mezzanine round
closed with a significant increase in corporate valuation as the company
simultaneously announced record results for the second quarter of 2007. ONStor
was recently recognised as one of STORAGEsearch.com's
Fastest Growing Storage
Companies for 2006/7.
...ONStor profile,
Venture Capital Funds in
Storage
Editor's comments:- ONStor has an impressive customer
list, see their
article:-
Lessons from the world's largest data sharing applications (pdf)
New Head at Hitachi's Head Business
SAN
JOSE, Calif - June 20, 2007 - Hitachi today announced the appointment
of Pantelis Alexopoulos to the position of VP and general manager, Head
Business Group.
Alexopoulos has spent his entire 26 year
professional career in the hard
drive industry, beginning with a thorough technical foundation established
within IBM's hard drive
business. This was followed by nearly a decade at
Seagate and
Maxtor.
In
leading Hitachi's Head Business Group, Alexopoulos will have responsibility for
revenue performance, profit and loss, volume growth and cost management for one
of 5 major business groups. The head – which performs the important task of
reading and recording data – is one of the 2 key components of the hard
drive (the other is the media upon which data is stored). Head technology
requires deep understanding and application of nanotechnology, magnetics and
metrology, which enable data recording with nanometer precision.
...Hitachi profile
SiliconSystems Founder Named Entrepreneur
Award Finalist
ALISO VIEJO, Calif -
June 6, 2007 - SiliconSystems, Inc. today announced that its co-founder
and CEO, Michael Hajeck, has been selected as a finalist for the Ernst &
Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2007 Award.
Ernst & Young
recognizes outstanding entrepreneurs on a regional, national and global level
who are building and leading dynamic, growing businesses. Winners will be
announced at the awards ceremony to be held on June 19. Under Hajeck's
leadership, SiliconSystems has achieved exponential revenue growth since its
founding in 2002.
...award
finalists, ...SiliconSystems
profile,
Storage People
New Head of StorageWorks
PALO ALTO,
Calif - May 29, 2007 -
HP today announced the appointment of David E. Roberson to
senior VP and general manager of the company's enterprise storage business,
effective May 30.
Roberson was most recently CEO of
Hitachi Data Systems. As
head of HP StorageWorks,
he will be responsible for building on HP's foundation as a leading provider of
storage solutions and pursuing new opportunities for growth worldwide. Roberson
will report to Scott Stallard, VP and general manager of HP Enterprise Servers
and Storage. He succeeds Bob Schultz, who has continued to run HP StorageWorks
after his appointment in January to senior VP and general manager of the newly
formed HP Enterprise Server and Storage Software organization.
Roberson became chief executive officer of HDS in 2006 after serving
as president and chief operating officer since April 2002. In addition to his 26
years in key executive management positions at HDS, Roberson has served as a
board member of several public and private companies, spanning semiconductors to
IT services. Before HDS, he began his career at
Amdahl.
...HP profile,
Storage People
Editor's
comments:- StorageWorks is one of the longest enduring brands in the storage
market. We ran an online storage ad
for
StorageWorks 10 years ago when it still belonged to
DEC.
In the late 1990s open systems
RAID vendors like
EMC and
Compaq grew their
businesses on the soft underbelly of
Sun's server business
(which in revenue terms was double the size it is today). Sun's home grown
storage products were weak and the Sun base was an easy target. Sun eventually
changed its strategy to one of buying storage companies (Cobalt Networks,
HighGround Systems,
Pirus Networks,
Procom Technology,
StorageTek) and
reselling products from others.
ONStor Sales Up 157%
CAMPBELL, Calif - April 16,
2007 - ONStor Inc. today announced a record first quarter 2007 along
with the appointment of Thomas Gallivan as Senior VP of Worldwide Sales.
ONStor achieved a 157% increase in sales over the same quarter of the
previous year while also benchmarking 357% increase in International bookings.
Thomas S. Gallivan expands ONStor leadership with over 17 years of
worldwide sales and sales management experience. Previously, Tom was VP of
Worldwide Sales for
Rackable Systems where he was
responsible for global sales of server and storage products for the enterprise,
web and high performance computing markets. He achieved 9 consecutive quarters
of record growth in bookings and revenue. In addition, he has worked with
Sun Microsystems,
MAXSTRAT
and Seagate. Tom's
solid direct sales track record complements the ONStor channel strategy.
"File based content is growing at an alarming rate and it
generally consumes more capacity than other data types," said Tony Asaro,
Senior Analyst at Enterprise
Strategy Group. "As a result, the
NAS market is booming."
...ONStor profile
Sequent Alumni Join Adtron's SSD Growth
Team
PHOENIX,
AZ - March 21, 2007 - Adtron Corp announced today the addition of key
executives - Al Dei Maggi, VP Sales and Marketing; Wade Campbell,
VP Marketing and Business Development; and, Myril Shaw, Managing
Director of International Sales.
The expansion is part of the company's strategic plan to capitalize
on Adtron's leadership in flash solid
state disks for traditional markets, such as defense, telecom and
industrial; and, the expansion into non-traditional markets, such as networking
and server acceleration, which are
widely
acknowledged as high growth markets.
Al Dei Maggi joins Adtron as the VP of Sales and Marketing and is
responsible for the overall strategic direction of the sales and marketing
organizations, both domestically and internationally. Dei Maggi's background
includes 30 years of extensive strategic management and business development
experience with such companies as
Sun Microsystems,
Rackable Systems,
RLX
Technologies, and
Sequent.
Dei Maggi's experience ranges from sophisticated telecommunications and scalable
server platforms to server blade hardware and management software.
Wade Campbell joins Adtron as the VP of Marketing and Business
Development with direct responsibility for marketing, program management,
product planning, and strategic alliances. Campbell brings 25 years of
experience in the enterprise and embedded market space with such companies as
Motorola,
Intel, Dell, and Sequent.
Myril Shaw assumes the sales leadership position as Managing Director
of International Sales, with direct responsibility for developing distribution
channels in Europe, Asia and South America. Shaw has 25 years of international
sales, marketing and business development experience with RLX Technologies,
Marathon Technologies,
Internet
Dynamics and Sequent.
...Adtron profile,
Storage People
STEC Announces President
SANTA
ANA, Calif - March 20, 2007 - STEC, Inc. announced today that the
company's CTO and COO Mark Moshayedi has been promoted to President.
Mark Moshayedi will continue to hold all his previous offices and
report to the company's CEO. This appointment fills the office left vacant
following the company's divestiture of its Consumer Division in February.
Mark Moshayedi joined STEC in 1992. He has been primarily responsible
for leading the company's technology development initiative, which significantly
contributed to the company's record operating performance in 2006
...STEC profile
Tandberg Data Announces New CEO
Oslo
Norway - March 19, 2007 - Tandberg Data today announced the
appointment of Per Kristian Jacobsen as new CEO.
Mr.
Jacobsen replaces Gudmundur
Einarsson, who has been leading Tandberg for the last 7 years. Jacobsen
was until recently the CEO of
IT Fornebu AS - a
business he has been managing since it was established in 2000. ...Tandberg Data profile |
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| Animal Brands and
Metaphors in the Storage Market |
Animal
marketing metaphors are popular in service industries, but you'd be surprised
how many companies have used animals in their marketing of data storage
products and services.
The storage market was worth over $180 billion
in 2007, and as it gets bigger - more companies will turn to animal brands to
help differentiate their otherwise bland products and lend them artificial
(or deserving) characters and virtues.
The idea behind this type of
marketing is to suggest positive connotations so it's unlikely that anyone will
choose to associate their products with gremlins. But you may be surprised by
the population of the storage ark.
This reference articles lists all
known companies who have furry marketing brands, and also includes some which
are slimy, scaly and scary too. ...read the article,
Mice in storage | |
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Stories on goblinsearch.com
- Alexander
Woyte and the Goblins
In which the young Alexander is
kidnapped by minions of the goblin king and we rediscover Jane Austen's long
lost (and best) novel.
...And, in the end, when the Hunt comes to the rescue, we learn the
important difference between Tolkien's orcs and Wessex goblins. Length:- 5,300
words.
- My Pact with
the Goblin Queen
This is a horror story based in modern day
Brighton.
But this is not a tale about the bright city lights or the
Sussex sea shore.
The story takes place in the early hours of Sunday
morning in the foggy lane winding up from the London Road past the Withdean
stadium. Unlike the other stories on this web site, this one is
autobiographical. In fact the author claimed in a radio interview that nearly
every word was true. Length - 7,800 words
- Princess
Laura and the Unsuitable Dragon Suitors
Unlike the traditional
doormat formula in silly princess stories. This one doesn't include goblins -
but does include a dragon.
At the age of 18 Princess Laura is told she
must choose a husband from one of the princes from the four neigbouring
countries. Their manly deeds and interests all make an impression, but not what
was intended. Length:- 12,200 words.
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