2007/2008 Board of Directors

Vincent Franceschini is the Senior Director of Future Technologies for Hitachi Data Systems, reporting directly to the Corporation’s Chief Technology Officer. In this role he is responsible for defining the future direction of Hitachi Data System's Data Networking solutions on a worldwide basis and for selecting the key future technologies and solutions that the corporation will market.

Vincent is also Hitachi Data Systems' primary representative in leading industry standards bodies such as the SNIA. Board director of SNIA between 2001 and 2005, Vincent was elected Vice-Chairman of the Board in 2002 and 2003, and Treasurer of the SNIA Executive Committee in 2004. Re-elected Board Director in 2006, Vincent is proudly serving his second year as Chairman of the Board. Since 1999, Vincent has contributed to and held leadership roles in various SNIA activities such as SNIA International, Strategic Alliances, Storage Management Initiative and Grid. 

Prior to joining Hitachi Data Systems, Vincent led real-time systems and computer-integrated manufacturing software and hardware projects with Ford Motor Company and Burr-Brown. Vincent began his career in IT at Digital Equipment Corporation as a software engineer. He received his “Ingénieur Informatique” degree in Artificial Intelligence & Industrial Applications from L’Ecole Pour L’Informatique et les Techniques Avancées in Paris, France.

David Dale is an industry evangelist at NetApp where he drives product marketing initiatives related to NetApp’s iSCSI SAN solutions. With over 20 years experience in the computer industry he also participates in the industry as Chair of the SNIA IP Storage Forum, a regular contributor to industry journals, a frequent participant in IT seminars, and a frequent speaker and panelist at industry events around the globe. David was educated in England, and received a Bachelor of Science degree in applied physics from the University of London.

Phil has been involved in the architecture and design of storage controller interfaces throughout his 30+ year career at IBM. His experience ranges from IBM's Parallel OEMI Channel to Control Unit Interface and Parallel SCSI to the serial interfaces ESCON and FICON and then to Fibre Channel. He has been awarded several patents in the areas of channel protocols and storage controllers, and has received company awards for significant innovations and technical contributions to IBM products. He is a Senior Technical Staff Member in IBM's Systems & Technology Group, currently focusing on Storage Software Architecture and Standards.

Phil is also IBM's primary representative to the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA). He has served on the SNIA Board as a Director and its Secretary from 2002 to 2007, in addition to previously chairing both the Supported Solutions Forum and the Data Management Forum. Phil holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering with New Mexico State University.

Wayne M. Adams is a Senior Technologist and Director of Standards within the Office of the CTO, responsible for expanding and managing EMC technology initiatives with the industry standards bodies. Wayne has proudly served on the SNIA Board of Directors since 2003 and was previously elected Chair for two years. Wayne also is a Board Member for the DMTF technology association and serves as the Vice President of Marketing. Within EMC, previous managing positions include partner management and software product management, where responsibilities included API licensing and product lifecycle management for Storage Resource Management, SAN Management, and I/O pathing product lines. Prior to EMC, Wayne was responsible for product marketing and business development of various strategic software and hardware products at Digital Equipment Corporation. He started his high-tech career at Eastman Kodak as a system designer of real-time control systems. Wayne holds a Bachelor of Science degree with a dual major in Computer Science and Mathematics from the University of Pittsburgh.

Eric Bart is a long-term storage industry veteran involved in multiple aspects of storage management software development. Eric participated for several years on the DMTF. His experience also includes participation in the SNIA SMI-S Lab and Interoperability Conformance Testing Programs since their inception.

Eric is a member of Sun Microsystem's Systems Engineering team where he is responsible for developing and bringing to market Open Systems Storage Management products covering Storage Array, Tape Library, Fabric and Server Management technologies. He currently is serving as the Sun representative in the SNIA ECS program addressing the future requirements for SMI-S.

Prior to working at Sun, Eric was Vice President of Software Engineering at Storability Software, a pioneer in the distributed storage management of vendor agnostic storage environments. Eric has released products at Sun / StorageTek and Storability that have been SNIA SMI-S compliant and has regularly participated in plugfests supporting these products.

Prior to his work in Storage Management, Eric was employed for several years in the Financial Services and Defense Contracting industry building mission critical, secure management software.

Tom Clark is a resident SAN evangelist for Brocade, and represents Brocade in industry associations, conducts seminars and tutorials at conferences and trade shows, promotes Brocade storage networking solutions, and acts as a customer liaison. A noted author and industry advocate of storage networking technology, he is a former board member of the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) and has held chair positions for SNIA customer initiatives and the SNIA Interoperability Committee. Clark has published hundreds of articles and white papers on storage networking and is the author of Designing Storage Area Networks, Second Edition (Addison-Wesley 2003) and IP SANs: A Guide to iSCSI, iFCP and FCIP Protocols for Storage Area Networks (Addison-Wesley 2001), and Storage Virtualization: Technologies for Simplifying Data Storage and Management (Addison-Wesley 2005).

Prior to joining Brocade, Clark was Director of Solutions and Technologies for McDATA Corporation and the Director of Technical Marketing for Nishan Systems, the innovator of storage over IP technology. As a liaison between marketing, engineering, and customers, he has focused on customer education and defining features that ensure productive deployment of SANs. With more than 20 years experience in the IT industry, Clark has held technical marketing and systems consulting positions with Vixel Corporation and other data communications companies.

Norio joined HP/Compaq in 2001 as the Asia Pacific Marketing Planning Manager of the Enterprise Storage Group. Since then, he has driven marketing and planning efforts for the storage business in diverse roles in Marketing Planning, Business Planning and Marketing. He has also been key liaison with Asia Pacific and Japan storage marketing teams to support regional marketing activities. In addition to the job as SNIA representative, he is currently responsible for event planning and Asia Pacific marketing support.

Prior to joining HP, Norio worked for Matsushita Communication Industrial Co. Ltd for over 7 years and held key marketing and sales positions to grow the company's international business. He was an International Business Specialist and Marketing Strategy Planner in International Operations, and also served as Assistant Sales and Marketing Manager for Toyota Motors' global operations in the Automotive Electronics Division.

Norio holds an MBA from Schulich School of Business, York University in Toronto, Canada and a bachelor's degree in English from Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan.

Skip has 24 years of storage industry experience and an extensive 10-year background with storage industry associations at the board level. He is a staunch evangelist and industry spokesperson for storage networking and has participated in numerous presentations, seminars, press-tours, webcasts, conferences and industry initiatives. Skip has served as Vice President or on the Board of Directors of STA since its 8-year inception and on the Board of Directors on FCIA/FCLC for seven years, where he was also Chairman and President four years ago. Currently, Skip is Chairman of FCIA Speed/Roadmap Forum, on the Board of Directors of FCIA, the SCSI Trade Association and the Blade Server Alliance. Skip has enjoyed many distinguished accomplishments including: named on two QLogic SCSI chip patents, SCSI Trade Association and FCIA "Recognition of Outstanding Contribution" award, named on the AEA Product of the year award, Orange County Business Journal – OC Executive Review and participated in the Smithsonian Institute's first 5.25" SCSI disc drive. Skip is also contributing editor for ENDL "The SCSI Encyclopedia".

Skip’s career includes numerous positions in Marketing, Sales, Engineering and Management. He has held positions with Texas Instruments, Priam, Maxtor, Archive/Ardat and for the past 14 years he has been with QLogic, where he now serves as the Corporate Director of Technology and Planning.

A career Information Technology professional, Mr. Leger has served in virtually all capacities of sales, business development, marketing, customer service, and education, in technology-related positions.

As Vice President, Strategic Initiatives, for Computerworld’s Strategic Programs and Events team, Mr. Leger drove sales and sponsorship programs for this key Computerworld line of business since 1999. He joined International Data Group (IDG) in 1996 and served as Vice President of Business Development for the successful launch of IDG’s Internet Commerce Expo (ICE) event business. He served on the Board of Directors of Storage Networking World (SNW) from 2001 until his SNIA appointment in 2007.

Mr. Leger began his career as a technology and operations advisor to the U.S. Treasury Department on a foreign service assignment in Montreal, Canada from 1974 to 1977. He worked for Honeywell Information Systems, Canada (later Bull Worldwide Information Systems) from 1977 to 1992, in positions including Director of Marketing, Regional Director and other senior management assignments.

Originally from Fitchburg, Massachusetts, Mr. Leger returned to the Boston area in 1993 where he founded the Institute for Computer Studies in Burlington, and served as its President until 1995. During this time, he was also an Instructor in Northeastern University’s State-of-the-Art Program. Mr. Leger achieved a Diploma from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland in 1971, received a BA with honors from Providence College in 1972 and earned an MBA from the American Graduate School of International Management (Thunderbird) in 1973. He has participated in executive development programs at Harvard, MIT, and INSEAD in Paris, France.

A 31-year industry veteran and published author, he leads the shaping of strategic vision, emerging technologies, defining future offering portfolios including business and technology requirements, product planning and industry/customer liaison. He is a member of the SNIA Board of Directors, serves as Chair of the SNIA Tutorials, as a Board member of the Green Storage Initiative, and as Secretary/Treasurer of the Blade Systems Alliance. He has extensive experience in storage virtualization, the architecture of large heterogeneous SANs, replication and archiving strategy, disaster avoidance and compliance, information risk management, distributed cluster storage architectures and is a sought-after speaker and panelist at leading storage and networking-related seminars and conferences worldwide.

Prior to joining Xiotech in August 2000, Mr. Peglar held key technology specialist and engineering management positions over a nine-year period at StorageTek and at their networking subsidiary, Network Systems Corporation. Prior to StorageTek, he held engineering development and product management positions at Control Data Corporation and its supercomputer division, ETA Systems.

Mr. Peglar holds the B.S. degree in Computer Science from Washington University, St. Louis Missouri, and performed graduate work at Washington University’s Sever Institute of Engineering. His research background includes I/O performance analysis, queuing theory, parallel systems architecture and OS design, storage networking protocols, clustering algorithms and virtual systems optimization.

Gary Phillips is Senior Director of Standards and Open Source in the Office of the CTO for Symantec Corporation. In this position, Gary manages a diversity of responsibilities, including open source operations and strategy, Linux strategy, interactions with all standards bodies, standards compliance, shared development tool investigations, shared code management and technology control planning.

Gary has previously served the SNIA as a member of the board of directors, board vice chairman, board secretary, chairman of the interoperability committee, and chairman of the technology center committee. Gary currently serves on the board of directors of the Distributed Management Task Force as well.

Prior to joining Symantec, Gary held several senior management and technology positions for Compaq, Schlumberger, Western Geophysical, and Fairchild. He earned his Bachelors degree in Computer Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology and attended graduate school at the University of South Florida and the University of Houston.

Julie is currently the Director of Alliances with LSI Logic’s Engenio Storage Group and a certified Project Management Professional. Julie is a long-time veteran in the computer industry with a focus on storage systems partnerships, product management, and IT Management after graduating with a B.S. in computer science from Kansas State University. Julie has published articles in various industry publications and is a member of Leadership Wichita.

Julie Ryan was elected to the SNIA Board of Directors in October, 2004. She has been an active member of the SNIA Storage Management Forum (SMF) since its formation in 2002, holding the Business Development, Education, and Secretary chair positions and received the SNIA Outstanding Volunteer Award in 2003.

David Thiel is Technical Director and Staff Fellow in HP’s StorageWorks Division. David has been employed by HP, Compaq, and Digital Equipment Corporation since 1980. Since 1991, David has worked in the area of computer storage leading distributed storage system, storage virtualization, storage area network architecture, RAID, storage management software, standards, patent, and technical staff development activities. Previously, he was with the OpenVMS Operating System development organization where he was the lead architect and designer of OpenVMS Cluster systems.

David has long been active in the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA), where he has been an elected member of the Technical Council since 1999, including serving as chair for 2 years and vice-chair for 4 years. Dave has served as an ex-officio member of the Board of Directors and has participated in many other SNIA activities.

David earned 3 degrees in Electrical Engineering at MIT and holds 20 U.S. patents. He resides in Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA.

SW Worth is a Sr. Program Manager at Microsoft, and an elected member of the SNIA Board of Directors. From 2002 through 2006 he was the worldwide lead for the SNIA Tutorials. Before joining Microsoft in late 2003, SW Worth was Technical Marketing Manager at Crossroads Systems. From 1991-1999 he was an internal IT consultant with a large integrated electric and gas utility in the northeastern United States. He has a background in environmental engineering, and worked in paper mills in several U.S. states and in France.