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Storage People

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
New Book on Forensic Data Recovery

Editor:- June 4, 2009 Ontrack this week announced availability of the second 2nd edition of the American Bar Association book, “Electronic Evidence and Discovery: What Every Lawyer Should Know Now.”

The authors, both have strong connections to Ontrack and more than 20 years combined experience in the legal technology industry.

Michele C.S. Lange serves as a director for the Legal Technologies business line for Kroll Ontrack. As one of the nation’s most knowledgeable experts, Lange is frequently called upon by journalists to comment on cutting-edge law and technology developments, and she also routinely shares her expertise and knowledge as a guest speaker for legal associations, CLE programs and law school courses. Lange graduated from the University of Wisconsin – La Crosse with highest honors and the University of Minnesota Law School, cum laude.

Kristin M. Nimsger, president, Kroll Ontrack, leads the company’s more than 30 offices of employees who work to produce products and services for legal, corporate and government entities through three product lines: Legal Technologies and Consulting, Data Recovery and Advanced Search Technologies. Prior to joining Kroll Ontrack, Nimsger practiced law in the areas of complex product liability litigation, and property and casualty insurance defense. Nimsger earned her J.D. cum laude from William Mitchell College of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, and received her B.A. in English/Communications from the University of Minnesota, Duluth.

See also:- "book" - editor mentions, Data Recovery

Vembu Aims at US Online Backup Market

Editor:- May 28, 2009 - Vembu Technologies today announced the appointment of Randy J. Whitehead as VP of Strategic Business Development.

Reporting to Vembu's President, Lakshmanan Narayan, Randy will primarily be responsible for growing Vembu's business in the US and Canada, with a focus on channel partnerships.

"Our StoreGrid software solution powers the online backup services business of more than 1,250 service providers worldwide, and more than 850 of these service providers are based in North America," said Sekar Vembu, CEO of Vembu Technologies. "Randy's deep experience in operations and sales, coupled with his years of experience in the online backup market, will help to further catalyze our rapid growth in the service provider market."

Prior to Vembu, Randy was co-founder and COO of Arsenal Digital Solutions. Randy has more than 20 years experience in outsourcing solutions and operations, system integration and business development. He was also at StorageTek, where he was responsible for the industry's first implementation of a storage utility solution and the structuring of large outsourcing/utility deals, as well as the operation and delivery of managed storage services. He has also held senior positions with IBM, BT, Data General and AT&T. Storage People


New SSD Bookmarks - from Dolphin Interconnect Solutions

Editor:- May 13, 2009 - Dolphin's CEO,Tim Miller shares his SSD Bookmarks with readers of StorageSearch.com.

In addition to the interesting articles and blogs suggested today, Tim has answered for me the question of what to call externally connected PCIe SSDs. You may be ahead of me here already - "e-PCIe" is to PCIe what eSATA is to SATA. But it was new to me. I've had an interesting time this morning reading the articles. I'm sure you will too. ...read the article


Aleratec Names New VP Sales and Marketing

Editor:- May 5, 2009 - Aleratec today named Howard Wing to lead the company's sales and marketing activities.

Howard Wing's recent experience includes VP of Sales and Marketing at Plextor where he was actively involved in industry initiatives to bring USB 2.0 and SATA interfaces to the optical disc markets.


HP Poaches Storage Chief from EMC

Editor:- April 28, 2009 - HP announced the appointment of David Donatelli to serve as executive VP Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking (a $19 billion annual revenue business).

HP said Donatelli replaces Scott Stallard, who after 34 years, is retiring from HP.

Editor's comments:- EMC's website used to say nice things about Donatelli (formerly President of EMC Storage Division). You can see his archived biography here. It's apparently being purged as fast as HP's content management software will allow.

A folow up article on Barrons.com says the courts have now got involved due to a non-compete clause.


Dataram Acquires Micro Memory Bank

Editor:- April 22, 2009 - Dataram announced it has acquired Micro Memory Bank.

MMB maintains a particular niche in legacy memory products by being one of the few companies in the industry that carries and stocks virtually every memory upgrade ever made.

Dataram's President and CEO John Freeman said "David Sheerr (who founded MMB in 1994) is the 3rd executive to join Dataram in the past 12 months who has had previous experience as the president of a company. David's entrepreneurial skills and business success in our industry are valuable additions to our executive team."


Fusion-io Secures $47.5 million Series B Funding

Editor:- April 7, 2009 - Fusion-io announced it has closed $47.5 million in Series B funding and named a new CEO, David Bradford.

Bradford brings 30 years of experience to Fusion-io, including 15 years at Novell where he helped lead the company from startup status through a series of acquisitions, public offerings and global business development activities to its position as a multi-billion dollar corporation. During his last 3 years at Novell, he reported directly to the CEO, Eric Schmidt.

"I am delighted to hear that David Bradford has been appointed CEO of Fusion-io," said Dr. Schmidt, now the CEO of Google. "I have great confidence in his ability to lead this innovative company."

"In just over a year, this company has demonstrated through its ground-breaking product offerings that it has the potential to change the way enterprise organizations think about storage," said Scott Sandell, general partner at NEA (one of Fusion-io's early investors). "This round of funding will enable Fusion-io to build on that momentum and help the company keep pace with the growth demands of the marketplace, while permitting them to continue leading the evolution of network storage."


SSD Bookmarks from Solid Access Technologies

Editor:- April 2, 2009 - Solid Access Technologies' President, Tomas Havrda - shares his SSD Bookmarks today with readers of StorageSearch.com.

This is a company whose revenue grew 400% in 2008 and whose customers include Samsung Securities. So you may be surprised what Tomas Havrda has to say on the subject of flash SSDs for enterprise acceleration. He's not convinced it's a good idea.


IDEMA Names Sun's Flash Guru to Lead SSD Standards

Editor:- March 18, 2009 - IDEMA today announced that Michael Cornwell will lead its standards program for HDDs and SSDs.

Cornwell, the Lead Technologist for Flash at Sun Microsystems since 2007, has a long history in storage technologies and collaboration between manufacturers and customers. He spent 5 years with Quantum in various engineering and design roles. In 2002 he moved to Apple, where he was a lead storage architect on that company's iPod digital content player. See also:- Storage ORGs, Storage People


SSD Bookmarks from Woody Hutsell

Editor:- March 16, 2009 - Texas Memory Systems' President, Woody Hutsell - shares his SSD Bookmarks today with readers of StorageSearch.com.

Those who know the SSD industry well, mostly think of TMS as a company which makes very fast SSDs for accelerating SAN resident applications. But in the many discussions I've had with Woody Hutsell during the past decade - "reliability" has also been a frequent topic in our conversations.

That's because when you manufacture products which pack more memory chips than anyone else has ever put into a single box - all those "10 to the minus something" numbers which relate physics to semiconductor memory effects - add up to design problems which are far from theoretical. TMS has been engineering solid state storage systems for 30 years. So I was not surprised to see an in depth paper about reliability being one of the articles in this list of bookmarks.


Terry Cunningham Rejoins Seagate

SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif. - March 16, 2009 - Seagate today announced that Terry Cunningham will take the helm as senior vp of Consumer Solutions Division (CSD) and i365 effective immediately.

Having served previously as president and COO of Seagate Software, Cunningham returns for a 2nd term with the company to help augment the success of its consumer solutions and business services divisions.

Cunningham comes to Seagate from Coral8, an enterprise event-processing software company, where he served as CEO. Prior to that, Cunningham was president and CEO of InfoGenesis, a maker of consumer-focused, guest experience management software for the hospitality and foodservice industries.

Cunningham originally founded Crystal Decisions, which was purchased by Seagate in 1994, integrated into the company's software division and later became Seagate Software. Cunningham piloted Seagate Software through $350 million worth of acquisitions and helped grow the organization, with 40 offices and 2,000 employees. Cunningham's accomplishments also include serving as president and COO of VERITAS Software, and founding 2 other successful software companies. ...i365 profile, Storage People, Data Recovery


SSD Bookmarks from a Flash SSD Pioneer

Editor:- March 10, 2009 - BiTMICRO's CEO - Rey Bruce - shares his SSD Bookmarks today with readers of StorageSearch.com.

Lots of flash SSD companies nowadays like to call themselves "pioneers". In this case it's true, and the choice of label was my own. BiTMICRO launched an 18GB 3.5" flash SSD 10 years ago - in 1999. See also:- SSD Market History


Pliant Technology kicks off new series - the SSD Industry Bookmarks

Editor:- March 5, 2009 - Pliant Technology's VP of Marketing, Greg Goelz shares his SSD Bookmarks in the 1st episode of a classic new series starting today on StorageSearch.com.


NetApp's Denise Ridolfo Joins SNIA Europe Board

Editor:- March 2, 2009 - SNIA Europe announced today the recent appointment of NetApp's Denise Ridolfo to its Board of Directors.

Ridolfo, who is based in the USA and France, is NetApp's Industry & Standards Operations Manager, reporting into the CTO Office, and represents the company in various industry associations. Ridolfo has spent over 15 years in the IT and storage networking industry. Storage People


Scott Cleland - New Director of Marketing at Adaptec

MILPITAS, Calif. - February 11, 2009 - Adaptec, Inc. today announced the appointment of Scott Cleland as Director of Marketing.

With nearly 25 years of storage experience Cleland will lead Adaptec's global marketing activities.

Prior to joining Adaptec, Cleland served as the director of worldwide marketing for AMCC 3ware. And before that Cleland was director of product marketing and technical marketing for IBM's Mylex storage division, and previously held marketing positions at Archive, Exabyte, BusLogic, and Conner Peripherals. ...Adaptec profile, RAID controllers, Storage People


Nanometer Storage Announces VP of Engineering

SAN JOSE, Calif. - February 9, 2009 - Nanometer Storage announced the hiring of Mr. Ove Dunder as its Senior VP of Engineering and Research.

Mr. Dunder, 60, a mechanical engineer, is a multiple patent holder and comes to Nanometer Storage having directed the successful development of technology solutions for other venture backed organizations. ...Nanometer Storage profile

Editor's comments:-
this stealth mode company says they're working on 3.5" form factor storage devices that will offer more capacity than anything else currently available. They'd better get a move on - because that's a form factor which is slipping down the storage charts.


"Fusion-io - in the right place at the right time" - says new Chief Scientist, Steve Wozniak

Salt Lake City, UT - February 5, 2009 - Fusion-io announced today that Steve Wozniak has joined the company as its Chief Scientist.

Wozniak will act as a key technical advisor to the Fusion-io research and development group. He will also work closely with the executive team of Fusion-io in formulating a company strategy that will accelerate the expansion of major global accounts.

"With the revolutionary technological advances being made by Fusion-io, the company is in the right place at the right time with the right technology and ready to direct the history of technology into the 21st century and beyond," said Wozniak. "The technology marketplace has not seen such capacity for innovation and radical transformation since the mainframe computer was replaced by the home computer. Fusion-io's technology is extremely useful to many different applications and almost all of the world's servers."

Prior to this appointment Wozniak was a member of the company's advisory board, where he counseled the company on market trends, product road maps and other strategic activities - which will continue. ...Fusion-io profile, ...Steve Wozniak profile


Cypress Announces Management Change in Memory Division

SAN JOSE, Calif. - February 5, 2008 - Cypress Semiconductor Corp. today announced that Ahmad Chatilla, EVP of the Memory and Imaging Division will be leaving the company this month to pursue an opportunity as the CEO of a semiconductor wafer supplier.

He will be replaced by 21-year Cypress veteran, Dana Nazarian, who is currently the VP of the synchronous SRAM business unit of MID.

"Ahmad has been a valuable member of the Cypress executive team. Working with Dana and the rest of the management team in MID, he has created an extremely profitable and cash-flow-generating enterprise-even in the current economic environment," commented T.J. Rodgers, CEO of Cypress. "We are sorry to see Ahmad leave after 15 years with Cypress, but we take pride in what he has been able to accomplish and we wish him the best in his new career as CEO of MEMC Electronic Materials, Inc."

Dana Nazarian joined Cypress in 1988 as a new college graduate from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a BSEE and rose steadily throughout the company in a variety of technical and business roles. ...Cypress Semiconductor profile, storage people, storage chips


StorageIO Founder Publishes Book - Green and Virtual Data Center

Stillwater, Minn.- January 27, 2009 - "The Green and Virtual Data Center" - is a new book (376 pages, MSRP $79.95) by noted author and StorageIO founder Greg Schulz.

The book sets aside the political aspects of what is or is not considered green to examine the opportunities for organizations trying to grow their business while being environmentally friendly in an economically efficient manner. Addressing multiple technology domains and disciplines, it looks at design and implementation tradeoffs using various best practices and technologies to sustain application and business growth while maximizing resources, such as power, cooling, floor space, storage, server performance, and network capacity. ...StorageIO profile


NetApp Veteran is New CEO at Broadcast Media Storage Company

SUNNYVALE, Calif. - January 27, 2009 - Omneon, Inc. announced today that its board of directors has appointed Suresh Vasudevan as the company's president and CEO and as a member of the board.

Vasudevan joins Omneon having most recently served as senior vice president of product operations at Network Appliance and as a member of the company's executive team, leading all product management and engineering for the NetApp product portfolio. Vasudevan's career at NetApp spanned nearly a decade. Prior to his tenure at NetApp, Vasudevan worked at the management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. in New Delhi, Mumbai, and Chicago as a senior engagement manager focusing on product marketing, operations, and marketing strategy. ...Omneon profile, Storage People, NAS


Hitachi GST Attracts Magnetic CTO

SAN JOSE, Calif. - January 19, 2009 - Hitachi Global Storage Technologies today announced the appointment of Steven Campbell to the position of Chief Technology Officer.

As the top technology executive for Hitachi GST, Steven will play a strategic role in the company's future direction and business growth.

Steven has 30 years of experience in the electronics and data storage industry, having served in senior executive roles at Western Digital and technology management roles at Quantum and HP. Most recently he was CEO of Innotek Limited and its subsidiary Magnecomp Precision Technology, a strategic component supplier to major hard drive companies (which was acquired by TDK in 2007). ...Hitachi profile


Dave Hitz Publishes Bio

Editor:- January 12, 2009 - NetApp's founder, Dave Hitz has written an autobiography called - How To Castrate a Bull.

It's published tomorrow. ...order the book, ...Network Appliance profile, Animal Brands in the Storage Market


Seagate Seeks New Direction

January 12, 2009 - Seagate announced the departure of William D. Watkins from the role of CEO.

Seagate has been talking about delivering SSD products since 2007. But don't hold your breath waiting... Why Seagate will Fail the SSD Challenge


SanDisk's CEO Receives Exemplary Leadership Award

Milpitas, CA - December 11, 2008 - SanDisk Corp announced that its founder and CEO - Dr. Eli Harari today received the Global Semiconductor Alliance's Exemplary Leadership Award.

The prestigious award recognizes individuals whose contributions to the semiconductor industry exemplify a transformative vision and global leadership. Dr. Harari, along with his colleagues Sanjay Mehrotra and Jack Yuan, founded SanDisk in 1988. Since then, SanDisk has grown into the world's largest supplier of flash memory cards, with revenues in excess of $3.89 billion in 2007.

Eli Harari holds a Ph.D. in solid state sciences from Princeton University, and received a B.S. in physics with honors from Manchester University. In addition to inventing EEPROM, the precursor to flash, Harari's technical resume includes more than 100 U.S. and foreign patents. ...SanDisk profile, Storage People


MTI Names New CMO

Godalming, UK - September 22, 2008 - MTI today announced the appointment of Aad Dekkers to the position of Chief Marketing Officer and Head of Business Development.

Aad will direct MTI'smarketing strategy and business development. Aad will report directly to Keith Clark, MTI's CEO. Aad joins MTI from Network Appliance where he was the Director of Products, Solutions & Alliance Marketing for Europe and served on the board of SNIA Europe. ...MTI Technology profile


Tarmin Technologies Appoints US Sales Director

Ongar, UK - September 9, 2008 - Tarmin Technologies announced today that Bruce Holbert has joined Tarmin as director of sales, North America.

Holbert was most recently partner accounts manager for national accounts at EMC. Prior to that, Holbert spent over 15 years at several start-up and reseller-oriented companies where he was involved in numerous partnership, channel management, and direct sales roles. ...Tarmin profile


SiliconSystems Names New VP Marketing

ALISO VIEJO, Calif - July 10, 2008 - SiliconSystems, Inc. today announced that Robert Fan has joined the company as VP of marketing.

Fan brings to SiliconSystems more than 22 years of technology industry experience in marketing, sales and product development.

Prior to joining SiliconSystems, Fan was VP of corporate marketing and business development of Entorian Technologies. Fan has also held senior management positions at Intel where he focused on the mobile computing and storage markets. ...SiliconSystems profile


LeftHand Networks Appoints Richard Shea to Lead North American Sales

BOULDER, Colo. - July 7, 2008 - LeftHand Networks today announced the appointment of Richard Shea as VP of North American sales.

Shea, formerly area sales VP at EqualLogic, will oversee all domestic and Canadian sales efforts. Shea will focus on furthering LeftHand Networks' iSCSI SAN leadership position and driving fast-paced revenue growth through LeftHand Networks' network of channel partners. ...LeftHand profile

Editor's comments:-
there are hundreds of oems listed on storagesearch.com which sell NAS products. So it's a confusing market.

Although LeftHand claims to be the "largest pure-play iSCSI vendor" (with more than 2,700 customers) I checked their reader ranking on our site and found they actually get less reader interest than TrueSAN Networks (a company which went out of business many years ago.) So it looks like they need to find something more interesting to say.


SiliconSystems Names Phil Gioia VP of Operations

ALISO VIEJO, Calif - June 10, 2008 - SiliconSystems, Inc. today announced that Phil Gioia has joined the company as VP of operations.

Gioia, with more than 25 years of technology industry experience in manufacturing operations, will lead the expansion of SiliconSystems' operations to support its rapid global growth.

Prior to joining SiliconSystems, Gioia was VP of supply chain management at QLogic in charge of outsourced manufacturing operations. Before that, Gioia was a senior VP of operations for SPARC notebook maker Tadpole-RDI, VP of manufacturing and procurement for Pinnacle Micro and Director of Manufacturing for Toshiba America.

Gioia achieved the rank of captain in the U.S. Marine Corps, and has an MBA from the University of La Verne, School of Business. ...SiliconSystems profile, storage reliability


LSI's CEO Talks about SSD Market

Editor:- June 9, 2008 - LSI's CEO Abhi Talwalkar reveals his thinking about the SSD market in an interview published today by DIGITIMES.

Talwalkar talks in knowledgeable detail about what he thinks are the prospects for LSI in both the notebook and server SSD markets. But I come away from this with an impression that LSI is going to be a late me-too player in the SSD infrastructure market. ...read the article, ...LSI profile, RAID adapter cards


TMS Has Soft Solution for DBA's Hardest SSD Challenges

Houston, Texas - May 29, 2008 - Texas Memory Systems today announced the appointment ofMike Ault as resident Oracle guru.

Mr. Ault is a recognized Oracle expert and has published more than 20 Oracle-related books. By bringing him on board, TMS can provide the greatest possible level of expertise to help address customer database performance challenges and ensure optimal success with deployments of its RamSan SSDs. ...TMS profile, ...Mike Ault's Blog

Editor's comments:-
when planning business changes - the softer side (getting the people part right) often doesn't get as much attention as the harder aspects (technology, investments, infrastructure.)

Using SSDs for enterprise acceleration works best - when brainpower is working in tandem with the technology.


SiliconSystems Founder is Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Finalist

ALISO VIEJO, Calif. - May 20, 2008 - SiliconSystems, Inc. today announced that its founder and CEO, Michael Hajeck, has been selected as a regional finalist for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

Ernst & Young recognizes outstanding entrepreneurs on a regional, national and global basis that are building and leading successful, growing and dynamic businesses. This is the 2nd consecutive year in which Hajeck has been named a finalist. Winners will be announced at a black-tie awards ceremony on June 11th at the Hyatt Regency in Irvine, Calif. ...SiliconSystems profile

MarketingViews.com FAQs for connected IT marketers

People
on STORAGEsearch.com
The Byte family was just a small part of
the interesting community of beings who
worked in the storage market.
Pioneers from early storage history
.

some of today's storage bloggers

Dave Hitz - NetApp

Dimitris Krekoukias - Recovery Monkey

Gregory Wong - Forward Insights

Hu Yoshida - Hitachi Data Systems

Jonathan Schwartz - Sun Microsystems

Mike Workman - Pillar Data Systems

Robin Harris - StorageMojo

Tony Pearson - IBM

Matt Werner - Storage Buzz

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storage people archive

You can also see archived copies of this "people page" as it looked in recent years
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Animal Brands and Metaphors in the Storage Market
Squeak! - 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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Storage History - Squeaks-a-Bit
History of storage
on STORAGEsearch.com
Megabyte's ancestor, Sir Squeaks-a-Bit had come over to England in 1066 with William the Conquerer's ship in a barrel of Normandy cheese.

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storage history (1949 till last week) STORAGEsearch NAS ACSL - the publisher