2018-2019 SNIA Board and Technical Council Election - Candidate Profiles and Ballot

Attention SNIA Voting Member Company Representatives -

Below, please find the candidate information and Ballot for the 2018-2019 SNIA Board of Directors and Technical Council (TC) Elections. It is important that we have your vote and endorsement of these Candidates as they will be playing a key role in the leadership of the storage industry and this organization.

The Board of Directors (Board) is the governing body of SNIA. It is composed of 10 Directors elected by the voting membership, and 3 Directors appointed by the Board. For the 2018-2019 Board, 5 elected Directors continue on the Board to serve the second year of their terms. Accordingly, 5 seats are open for election (for 2–year terms) by SNIA voting members and there are 7 Candidates for these seats. 2 seats will be open for Director appointments by the Board (after elections).

The Technical Council (TC) is the body of technical experts that guides the technical direction of the SNIA. It is typically composed of 8 voting members elected by the voting membership and 3 voting members nominated by the Technical Council and appointed by the Board of Directors. For the 2018-2019 TC, 4 elected members continue on the Council to serve the second year of their terms. Accordingly, 4 seats are open for election (for 2–year terms) by SNIA voting members and there are 6 Candidates for these seats. 3 seats will be open for appointment by the Board (after elections).

Please find and review information on each of the Board of Directors and Technical Council candidates below.

To vote (confidentially), complete and e-mail this - BALLOT and forward via e-mail to the Executive Director at ed@snia.org

The deadline for submission of a ballot is midnight Pacific Time, September 30, 2018.

Thank You - your support of the SNIA is appreciated.

Candidates for Board of Directors

Richelle Ahlvers

Voting Member Company: Broadcom Inc.
Title: Storage Management Architect
Length of Employment with Current Company: 3 years
Years of Storage Industry / IT Community Experience: 24 years
Education: University of Kansas, Computer Engineering

Previous SNIA Service (Technical Working Groups, Forums, Initiatives, Committees, Board, TC, Task Forces, Projects):

Richelle has been engaged with SNIA for many years. She was involved in an early working group in the ‘90s (the NWM-WG) that helped set the future direction for SMI-S, evaluating different potential technologies including WBEM-CIM.  More recently, she served as the SNIA Technical Council Chair from ’09 – ‘11, and has been engaged across a breadth of technologies ranging from storage management, to solid state storage, cloud, and green storage. She currently leads the SSM Technical Work Group developing the Swordfish Scalable Storage Management API, as well as serving as the SMI Conformance Chair.

Employment History:

• Hewlett-Packard:  1994 - 2014
• Broadcom: 2015 - present

Industry Achievement Awards:

• DMTF Star Award – November 2016
• SNIA New Contributor of the Year Award: 2016

Your Motivation for Seeking This Seat:

As the storage industry continues its ongoing transformation, I would like a seat on the SNIA Board of Directors in order to help drive the SNIA organization forward.  I eagerly look forward to the opportunity to contribute to the continued success of the organization, and work with the rest of the Board, Tech Council and other industry leaders.

Other Associations That You Are Currently Active With and In What Capacity:

• DMTF: Liaison to SNIA
• DMTF: Redfish Forum Member
• NVM Express: ManagementIF Member
• OCP: Storage Member - Monitoring, working to build SNIA Swordfish liaison
• SWE
• IEEE, IEEE – Women in Engineering (WIE), IEEE – Computer Society
• United Way – Women’s United, Board Member

Potential Areas of Interest (Marketing, Work Groups, Standards, Interoperability, End User Council, Other):

With a diverse portfolio of products and technologies, Broadcom has a wide array of interests in existing SNIA technical work groups, from driving connector standards in the SFF, to driving the development and implementation of a new storage management standard on behalf of both our own products as well as our many partners in industry.  Broadcom is also interested in developing technology and opportunities surrounding NVMe and supporting ecosystems applied to storage use cases, and working with our partner companies to develop other future-looking opportunities in emerging storage technologies and markets.

Biography:

Richelle Ahlvers is Storage Management Software Architect at Broadcom Inc., where she defines storage management integrations, solutions, and standards strategies for the Data Center Storage Group.
 
Richelle has spent over 20 years in Enterprise Storage R&D teams in a variety of technical roles, leading the architecture, design and development of storage array software, storage management software user experience projects including mobility, developing new storage industry categories including SAN management, storage grid and cloud, and storage technology portfolio solutions.   
 
Richelle has been engaged with industry standards initiatives with SNIA and DMTF for many years.  She served as the SNIA Technical Council Chair and on the SNIA Board of Directors and has been engaged across a breadth of technologies ranging from storage management, to solid state storage, cloud, and green storage. She currently leads the SSM Technical Work Group developing the Swordfish Scalable Storage Management API.

Richelle has also initiated and led both site and corporate level women's diversity forums, and presents regularly at diversity conferences.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/richelleahlvers/

PK Gupta

Voting Member Company: Dell
Title: Senior Director, Global DPS Presales Lead
Length of Employment with Current Company: 21 years 4 months
Years of Storage Industry / IT Community Experience: 33 years
Education: B. E. (Computer Science) and PGDM (IT)

Previous SNIA Service (Technical Working Groups, Forums, Initiatives, Committees, Board, TC, Task Forces, Projects):

Founded SNIA India in the end of 2003, grew membership to 100 companies in 18 months and was chairman till 2006. Moved to Singapore in July 2005 and joined SNIA South Asia in 2006 as vice chairman then became chairman multiple times till 2017 end before moving to Santa Clara in Oct 2017.  Also started SNIA Malaysia. Promoted SNIA storage courses and general storage education across Asia in organizations and universities.  Represented and spoke in 100+ events in last 15 years across Asia for SNIA and chaired sessions for SNIA.  Organized Storage Networking World (SNW) in Singapore and India 4 times.  I am also part of few universities international advisory board.  For contribution to SNIA International, was awarded SNIA Industry Impact Award in 2012.  Was first person in Asia to get this award.  Attended SNIA Board calls most of the time by webex and couple of times in person in last 15 years.  Participated in few Technical Councils also like ILM, Data Protection, 100 year archive etc. between 2004 to 2006.

Employment History:

• DellEMC – May 1997 till now. Leading team of 500 Data Protection Solutions pre-sales team globally.
• River Run Software Group – Feb 1990 to April 1997.  Group manager
• Uptron – Aug 1985 to Jan 1990. Software Engineer

Industry Achievement Awards:

• AIMA Distinguished Engineer Award 2009
• SNIA Industry Impact Award 2012
• EMC APJ Leadership Award 2013
• EMC President Club Awards 9 out of 10 years since 2007

Your Motivation for Seeking This Seat:

Education is my passion, have been visiting professor in few universities since 1996.  I love networking people.  Have been in storage and data protection area from last 23 years.  Gone through software development, product management, product marketing and presales management. 

I have been associated with SNIA since Nov 2003 when first storage event happened in Bangalore, India organized by Brenda and Kumar Mallavali, founder of Brocade. SNIA has been my second job while I was in Asia since then till Oct 2017 when I moved to US. I enjoy doing selfless service for promoting storage industry.  Given the opportunity, I will be happy to contribute for SNIA in US like I served SNIA in ASIA for last 15 years or more as it is bigger platform.

Other Associations That You Are Currently Active With and In What Capacity:

As I just moved to US, we had to close SNIA South Asia (no one else was ready to commit their time for SNIA).  I am still active in few universities board memberships.  I have also run few associations before.  Ran Computer Society of India chapters from 1985 to 1989.  Ran All India Management Association (AIMA) alumni association as president from 2001 to 2005 in India before moving to Singapore.

Anything Else the SNIA Should Be Aware Of:

I feel that with my 33+ years of IT industry experience, last 23 years of Storage Industry experience and 15 years of experience with SNIA, I can contribute more for growth of SNIA and contribute for the success of storage industry.

Biography:

Pushpendra Kumar “PK” Gupta has over 33 years of experience in the IT Industry.  P.K. received a B. E. in Computer Science in 1985 from MNREC, PGDM from AIMA.  Currently, P.K. is Global Presales Leader for Data Protection Solutions for DellEMC based out of Silicon Valley, USA .  In this role, PK is responsible for worldwide presales engineers.  P.K. has been with EMC since May 1997, earlier roles being Sr Director Specialty Presales, Director Product Marketing, Product Management and Director of Engineering.

P.K. was a visiting professor in India for the last 22 years in various institutions such as Amity Business School, AIMA, IMT, IEC and JIMS.  Also P.K. is also on international advisory boards in a few Indian, Singapore and Malaysian universities.   P.K. writes technical and management articles in various international magazines; and he is an international speaker on storage management, cloud, big data, disaster recovery, IoT, Data protection & Privacy regulations and cyber security.  He is also founder and Chairman Emeritus for SNIA (Storage Networking Industry Association) India and SNIA South Asia.  P.K. was awarded the 2012 SNIA Industry Impact Award by SNIA International, 2013 APJ EMC President Leadership Award and has been nominated for President Club consistently from last 10 years. He was induced into EMC DPS Hall of Fame in May 2015.

Chris Lionetti

Voting Member Company: Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Title: Senior Technical Marketing Engineer
Length of Employment with Current Company: 2 years
Years of Storage Industry / IT Community Experience: 25 years
Education: AS (NMSU)

Previous SNIA Service (Technical Working Groups, Forums, Initiatives, Committees, Board, TC, Task Forces, Projects):

• Vol Chair for Education (2 Years)
• Treasurer for SMI-S (2 Years)
• Assisted in Writing multiple SNIA certification tests & CompTIA Storage+ exam
• Involved in both SMI-S TWG as well as SSM TWG
• Presented multiple times at both SNW and SDC
• Submitted/Reviewed a number of SNIA Dictionary Terms

Employment History:

• 1991-92 – Accugraph (Hardware Administrator)
• 1994-1998 HP (Customer Engineer)
• 1998-2003 Dell Computer (Storage Dev Engineer)
• 2003-2009 Microsoft (SAN Architect)
• 2009-2016 NetApp (Reference Architect)
• 2016- NimbleStorage/HPE (Senior Technical Marketing Engineer)

Industry Achievement Awards:

• Multiple SNIA 4.5 Club (presenter awards)
• 9 Storage/Datacenter related Patents
• Certifications (EMC, Hitachi, HP, Dell, SNIA, Microsoft, Cisco, Brocade, CompTIA)

Your Motivation for Seeking This Seat:

I am dedicated to helping the industry that has kept me well employed for 25+ years. I have a belief that open standards such as those nurtured by a group of dedicated professionals representing all of the major vendors is the best method to realize quality products from both the vendor and the consumer perspective.

List Other Associations That You Are Currently Active With and In What Capacity:

• DMTF (mostly in incorporating Swordfish and RedFish)
• CompTIA (Still on the advising list to help write certification, I have assisted on both Security+ and Storage+)
• WGU (Learning is a lifelong achievement, and I am completing the few classes to finish my degree with the intent to start my Masters)

Potential Areas of Interest (Marketing, Work Groups, Standards, Interoperability, End User Council, Other):

I am very interested in getting involved in more TWGs to represent the new larger company that Nimble Storage has become since being purchased by HPE. This has opened more fields of interestin LTFS, Green, SSS, SFF, NVRAM and Security in addition to TWGs that I have been participating in, namely SMI.

Anything Else the SNIA Should Be Aware Of:

I am happily married and live in Seattle with my Wife and two children, the eldest of which is attending Washington State University.

Biography:

Chris Lionetti is a veteran of the storage industry who has been building complex systems and SANs for over 25 years. Chris has long been actively involved with the Storage Network Industry Association, SNIA. He is currently a reference architect on the HPE Nimble Storage team. Earlier in his career, he worked as an engineer for HP, Dell, Microsoft, and NetApp. Chris holds 9 patents on topics related to data centers, networking, and storage.

J Michel Metz

Voting Member Company: Cisco Systems
Title: R&D Engineer
Length of Employment with Current Company: 8 years
Years of Storage Industry / IT Community Experience: 18 years
Education: BA, MA, Ph.D

Previous SNIA Service (Technical Working Groups, Forums, Initiatives, Committees, Board, TC, Task Forces, Projects):

I have been on the Board of Directors for SNIA for 5 years, and have been an active participant in SNIA webinars, tutorials, blogs, conferences, and committee services.

Employment History:

Have worked for Cisco, QLogic, Apple, as well as an independent entrepreneur for many years.

Industry Achievement Awards:

Globally-recognized storage contributor, requested speaker, and author. Winner of Distinguished Speaker awards.

Your Motivation for Seeking This Seat

Would like to continue the work that I have begun with the SNIA Board. Have been responsible for the establishment of a library of educational content, member of ad hoc committees for the organization, and representative of SNIA at industry conferences and events. 

Other Associations That You Are Currently Active With and In What Capacity:

• Board of Directors, Fibre Channel Industry Association
• Board of Directors, Non Volatile Memory Express

Potential Areas of Interest (Marketing, Work Groups, Standards, Interoperability, End User Council, Other):

General storage and storage networking

Biography:

J is currently an R&D Engineer for the Office of the CTO, Solid State Systems Group, but has a broad and eclectic background of both academic, corporate, and industry experience. He received his Ph.D in Mass Communication Technology from the University of Georgia, before starting 18+ years of his storage career. He is an award-winning public speaker, author, and contributor to industry trade publications. He has been active in industry standards, with membership on the Board of Directors for the Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA), Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA), and the NVMe Promotor’s Board.

Rob Peglar

Voting Member Company: Advanced Computation and Storage LLC
Title: President
Length of Employment with Current Company: 8 months
Years of Storage Industry / IT Community Experience: 41 years
Education: B.S (CS)

Previous SNIA Service (Technical Working Groups, Forums, Initiatives, Committees, Board, TC, Task Forces, Projects):

• Board of Directors (several terms)
• Treasurer (4 years)
• Tutorial Chair (5 years, 2006-2010)
• Co-Chair, ABDC
• Treasurer, SSSI
• Tutorial Author
• Event Speaker (in person, webcast, etc.)
• Member, File Systems TWG (late 1990s)

Employment History:

• President, Advanced Computation and Storage LLC (2018)
• CTO/Senior Fellow, Symbolic IO/Formulus Black (2016-2018)
• VP Advanced Storage, Micron (2015-2016)
• CTO Americas, EMC (Isilon) (2011-2015)
• VP/Senior Fellow, Xiotech (2000-2011)
• Principal Consultant, StorageTek (1991-2000)
• Manager, Software Development, Control Data (1980-1989)
• Programmer/Analyst, McDonnell Douglas (1978-1980)

Industry Achievement Awards:

Several SNIA Awards, several 'Best Speaker' event awards, etc.

Your Motivation for Seeking This Seat:

I wish to continue my service to the SNIA, as a Director. The SNIA is in a great position to lead the industry on several fronts, especially in persistent memory and new/innovative types of storage and data transport.

Other Associations That You Are Currently Active With and In What Capacity:

ACM, invited speaker

Potential Areas of Interest (Marketing, Work Groups, Standards, Interoperability, End User Council, Other):

Technology - Persistent Memory, NVMe-oF, memory and storage fabric technology
Industry - speaking (including keynotes), blogging, consulting

Biography:

Robert Peglar is currently the President of Advanced Computation and Storage LLC, after a distinguished 40-year career serving the compute and storage technology industries, spanning six companies. His most recent post was Senior Vice President and CTO of Formulus Black, leading development efforts in next-generation software for persistent in-memory computing. Before that, he was Vice President of Advanced Storage at Micron Technology, where he led efforts in advanced storage systems strategy, led the CTO function and executive-level planning with key customers and partners worldwide for Micron’s Storage Business Unit, and defined future storage portfolio offerings.

Prior to joining Micron in February 2015, Mr. Peglar was Chief Technology Officer, Americas at EMC Isilon for four years. Prior to EMC, he was a Senior Fellow and Vice President of Technology at Xiotech for 11 years. Prior to Xiotech, he held key technology specialist and engineering leadership positions over a 10-year period at StorageTek and its subsidiary, Network Systems Corporation. Prior to StorageTek, he held engineering development and product management positions for a decade at Control Data and its supercomputer division, ETA Systems.

Mr. Peglar serves on the Board of Directors of the SNIA, is the former co-chair of the SNIA Analytics and Big Data Committee and the SNIA Tutorials, and is the former director of the SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative. He also serves as an advisor to the Flash Memory Summit. Mr. Peglar has extensive experience in persistent memory architecture, data management and analysis, high-performance computing, nonvolatile systems, distributed cluster architectures, filesystems, I/O performance optimization, cloud storage, replication and archiving strategy, networking protocols, and storage virtualization. He is a sought-after keynote speaker and panelist at leading storage and computing-related seminars and conferences worldwide. Mr. Peglar is a four-time EMC Elect honoree, 2014-2017. He was also one of 25 senior executives worldwide selected for the CRN Storage Superstars Award in 2010.

Mr. Peglar holds a 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 memory optimization, distributed systems, I/O performance analysis, queuing theory, parallel systems architecture and OS design, filesystems and storage networking protocols, clustering algorithms and virtual systems communication.

Michelle Tidwell

Voting Member Company: IBM
Title: Program Director / Global Offering Manager
Length of Employment with Current Company: 25+ Years
Years of Storage Industry / IT Community Experience: 25+ Years
Education: Santa Clara University, Bachelor of Science in EECS (Electral Engineering and Computer Science)

Previous SNIA Service (Technical Working Groups, Forums, Initiatives, Committees, Board, TC, Task Forces, Projects):

• Board of Directors, Member (2015-2016 Term), Member (2016-2018)
• SNIA Green Storage Technical Working Group (2007-2011)
• CSI / CSTI 2016-2018, presented in Data Mobility for Multi Cloud Webinar in August.

Employment History:

A long history with IBM, working in Storage development and later in Solution Engineering with ISV Partners, and most recently business development. I have been employed with IBM since I graduated from Santa Clara University with a degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Resume available upon request.

Industry Achievement Awards:

SNIA Emerald Award for the SNIA Emerald Program 2011 Launch

Your Motivation for Seeking This Seat:

This is an exciting time in the storage industry, with a number of new technologies and solutions coming to maturity (Cloud, SDS, Hyperconverged,
Object Storage – just to name a few).   And these solutions are becoming
much more Application aware today.    SNIA provides a way for companies in
the Storage field to maximize our collective brain trust in pushing the envelop around standards and better ways of bringing solutions to our clients.  I would like to put my experience to use, and offer any help I can in this journey through serving on the board.

Other Associations That You Are Currently Active With and In What Capacity:

No other industry associations at this time.

Potential Areas of Interest (Marketing, Work Groups, Standards, Interoperability, End User Council, Other):

Technologies:  Cloud, Object Storage, Hyperconverged Solutions, Green Storage, Software Defined Storage, Networking

Biography:

IBM Systems Storage, Program Director/Global Offering Manager, Spectrum Virtualize Michelle Tidwell is responsible for IBM Spectrum Virtualize, Software Defined Storage offering, driving product delivery, sales and strategy around IBM’s Virtualization for Block Storage delivered as Software. In this role, Michelle leverages her 8 years in IBM Storage ISV Alliances and Solution Engineering Management to bring the right application focus in the development of Software Defined Storage solutions.

Michelle was previously responsible for IBM Storage ISV Strategy, and her role included working with Strategic ISVs globally to develop new solutions and business alliances in the area of Storage across a number of vertical segments and cross-industry. Solutions included storage deployed in Clouds, Enterprise Data Centers, as well as MSPs/CSPs.  Responsibilities included driving ISV technology investments and integration within the Storage portfolio and taking those solutions to market.

Michelle is a native of San Jose, CA and holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Santa Clara University.

Al Zmyslowski

Voting Member Company: Fujitsu America
Title: SVP, PPG Engineering
Length of Employment with Current Company: 39 years
Years of Storage Industry / IT Community Experience: 41 years
Education: MSEE, Univ. of Michigan

Previous SNIA Service (Technical Working Groups, Forums, Initiatives, Committees, Board, TC, Task Forces, Projects):

• Board member since 2009. 
• SNIA Treasurer from 2012 to present. 
• As Treasurer, have chaired multiple budget task forces and sub-committees to make budget and operational recommendations to the Board to ensure SNIA’s financial health. 
• Chair, Tech Center Committee, since 2012 and a member of the TCC since 2010. 
• Chaired Tech Center Move/Futures sub-committees in 2013 and 2017/2018.  The 2013 effort facilitated the move of the SNIA Technology Center to its present location. 
• Member of Executive Director Task Force (2015/2016) which focused on recruiting, interviewing and proposing ED replacement candidates.

Employment History:

• 20 years at Amdahl Corp in various design, architectural and management positions
• 3 years at Fujitsu Technology Solutions as VP of ISC
• 5 years at Fujitsu Computer Systems as VP/SVP of Engineering
• 10 years at Fujitsu America as SVP of Engineering, Platform Products Group

Industry Achievement Awards:

None.

Your Motivation for Seeking This Seat:

Fujitsu has been a member of SNIA for many years and has participated in various SNIA activities in the US and in Japan.  After being on the Board for 9 years I have an appreciation of SNIA’s strengths and contributions to the industry and feel that I can continue to make both general and specific contributions to SNIA as a Board member. 

For the last 6 years I have acted as SNIA Treasurer.  This role has provided me with additional insight into the strategic, financial and operational needs of the SNIA.  In particular, SNIA’s growth in new areas such as solid state storage will be a key factor in SNIA’s future growth.  As a Board member I hope to continue to contribute to these areas. 

Finally, I have had a long running interest in SNIA’s Technology Center and the projects it hosts.  I have been a member of the Technology Center Committee for 8+ years as well as currently serving as Chair of the committee.  I would like to continue in this role and help the Technology Center become more of an asset to SNIA and the industry as a whole by involving the Technology Center in hosting SNIA and industry projects. 

Other Associations That You Are Currently Active With and In What Capacity:

None.

Potential Areas of Interest (Marketing, Work Groups, Standards, Interoperability, End User Council, Other):

SNIA Tech Center, Green Storage, Solid State Storage

Biography:

Mr. Zmyslowski’s responsibilities include engineering support for enterprise servers, storage and mobile products sold by Fujitsu America. In addition, Mr. Zmyslowski directs engineering pre-sales support, conducts interoperability and performance testing, and manages proof of concept work at the Fujitsu North American TRIOLE Integration Center. 

Mr. Zmyslowski has 30+ years of experience in the IT industry. He began his career at Amdahl Corporation in 1979 where he worked on CPU design and development. Mr. Zmyslowski held various technical and management positions at Amdahl before being named Vice President of the Integration and Solution Center at Fujitsu Technology Solutions in 2000.  With the merger of Fujitsu Technology Solutions and Fujitsu PC in 2004, he became SVP of Engineering of Fujitsu Computer Systems.  Mr. Zmyslowski took on his present position in April 2009 when Fujitsu America was formed.

Mr. Zmyslowski is the inventor of 12 U.S. patents. He holds a bachelor of science in electrical engineering from Kettering University and a master of science in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan.

Candidates for Technical Council

Curtis Ballard

Voting Member Company: Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Title: Master Technologist
Length of Employment with Current Company: 23 years (20 at HP 3 at HPE in the same job)
Years of Storage Industry / IT Community Experience: 23 years
Education: Bachelor of Science, Electrical Engineering, Bob Jones University 1992; Master of Science, Computer Communications, Clemson University 1994

Previous SNIA Service (Technical Working Groups, Forums, Initiatives, Committees, Board, TC, Task Forces, Projects):

No direct previous SNIA service prior to 2018.  In May 2018 I interviewed for and received an appointment to the SNIA Technical Council as part of a plan for transition of the SNIA technical interaction from Doug Voigt to myself.  Following that I participated in the July SNIA TC face-to-face meetings.  Previously I attended some Storage Management Initiative working group meetings as an invited guest for a special topic.  I have extensive experience working in supporting roles for SNIA participants from my company and support of SNIA activities by other standards bodies.

Employment History:

• Hewlett Packard, 1994 – 2015
  
  • HP Storage
• Hewlett Packard Enterprise, 2015 to Present
  
  • HPE Storage

Industry Achievement Awards:

• INCITS Technical Excellence Award, 2011

Your Motivation for Seeking This Seat:

I like working across multiple parts of a project and understanding how those parts work together to make a solution so I have always worked on tasks outside of my core responsibility to gain a better understanding of the big picture.  I got involved in industry standards in 2005 when I was asked to attend a few INCITS/T10 meetings to provide expertise in a specific technology. I found that standards meetings gave me the opportunity to learn about more of the storage industry including intent for how the standards pieces should work together as well as learning about different perspectives on design. Over time I was asked to pick up representation for all of Hewlett Packard Enterprise at INCITS/T10. Participating in the T10 standards has given me an opportunity to work on proposals across all aspects of the SCSI interface while helping me build my expertise in storage, storage interfaces, and how to write good specifications.  I have been able to serve development teams across my company by having the connections into the standards community and the expertise in the SCSI interface standards to be able to contribute to internal designs.

My background includes a Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering with a focus on microprocessors and a Master’s degree in computer communications with a focus on high performance networking. Those two areas came together in the engineering work I have done at Hewlett Packard and Hewlett Packard Enterprise where I’ve participated in designs for both host and target storage products as well as storage networking designs for connecting them.  By participating in storage industry activities in parallel to driving initiatives to support my company I’m able to contribute to the storage industry by bringing the expertise I’ve developed through many years of electrical and firmware development while also developing new expertise due to being a participant in the design of new capabilities.  It is exciting to be able to contribute to the entire storage industry while also serving my company and growing personally.

Due to the long term value that I have been able to provide Hewlett Packard Enterprise through my effective participating in the T10 standards development and the recent translation of that value into being able to contribute to and provide value from the NVM Express specifications my management supports my pursuing a position on the SNIA TC.

As part of the INCITS/T10 committee I have contributed designs to nearly every part of the SCSI family of standards. Features that I designed and drove standardization of have been included in tape drives, medium changers, block devices, primary commands, enclosure management commands, SCSI to ATA translation, and SAS specifications.  Many of those features have been broadly implemented across the industry.  I have also served as the editor of draft standards and provided extensive review and comment to help refine work brought forward by other companies. In addition I have proven effective at coordinating technical experts across multiple teams and different companies and leading the combined experts to achieve a design that meets the needs of all.  More recently I have been using those same skills in the NVM Express meetings where I have been leading a sub-team with representatives from most of the major storage providers and was successful in guiding the team to a design that satisfied all of the participants.  At the same time I have been an active participant in NVM Express sub-teams led by others.  I would like to be able to bring those same skills to the SNIA TC.

Doug Voigt’s retirement opens an exciting opportunity for me to run for a position with the TC where I can serve the storage industry beyond just interface technology development and continue to support my company while also growing personally by helping to develop and guide the development of new storage technologies.

Other Associations That You Are Currently Active With and In What Capacity:

• INCITS T10
  
  • HPE Principal member, Vice-Chair, Editor of ADC-4, ADT-3 and SSC-5, Facilitator of Tape Working Group
  • Active participant in most T10 projects
• NVM Express
  
  • HPE Alternate, HPE technical lead
  • Active participant in NVM Express Technical WG and Management WG
• INCITS T11 and INCITS T13
  
  • HPE Alternate

Potential Areas of Interest (Marketing, Work Groups, Standards, Interoperability, End User Council, Other):

• Interfacing to storage, including byte, block, and object
• Storage media technology
• Storage management

Biography:

Curtis Ballard is a technologist with Hewlett Packard Enterprise in the HPE Storage organization.  Curtis has over 20 years of experience in storage and storage interfaces technologies.  While working at Hewlett Packard and Hewlett Packard Enterprise Curtis has worked in product design teams for magneto optical disk drives, medium changer devices, tape drives, disk arrays, and enclosure management devices.  He has worked on hardware designs for storage interfaces and storage controllers as well as firmware for motion control, storage interfaces, user interface, and embedded operating systems. 

Curtis currently is a technologist in the HPE Storage R&D organization as well as representing HPE in industry standards bodies.  He is the vice-chair of INCITS/T10 SCSI Storage Interfaces Technical Committee and as is contributing member of NVM Express.  Curtis is currently the technical editor for several the INCITS/T10 standards.  He in an inventor on over 40 US patents in the storage industry across electrical, software, and mechanical disciplines and works in the Hewlett Packard Enterprise architecture community on storage architecture, intellectual property, and storage strategy.

Rob Barker (Barkz)

Voting Member Company: Pure Storage, Inc.
Title: Technical Director, Microsoft/Cloud/Automation
Length of Employment with Current Company: 5 years
Years of Storage Industry / IT Community Experience: 20 years
Education: None

Previous SNIA Service (Technical Working Groups, Forums, Initiatives, Committees, Board, TC, Task Forces, Projects):

SMI Lab Governing Board Member

Employment History:

• Pure Storage -- 5yrs, Technical Director -- Focused on Microsoft solutions development (includes SCVMM + SMI-S), Azure/AWS integrations and REST, PowerShell, Python integrations/SDKs.
• NetApp -- 5yrs, Reference Architect -- Focused on Microsoft solution development, DataONTAP PowerShell SDK
• Microsoft -- 14yrs, Sr. Techincal Evangelist -- Focused on .NET Framework evangelism, SharePoint development, Office Technical Solutions, and Developer Evangelism.

Industry Achievement Awards:

None.

Your Motivation for Seeking This Seat:

I want to get more involved with the larger community of experts.

Other Associations That You Are Currently Active With and In What Capacity:

SMI Lab -- Member. Stepped down from SMI Lab Governing board b/c of work constraints. That issue is changing as more team members are being added which will free up more of my cycles.

Potential Areas of Interest (Marketing, Work Groups, Standards, Interoperability, End User Council, Other):

SMI-S, Swordfish, Redfish, Cloud

Biography:

Barkz is a Technical Director focused on Cloud Automation and Microsoft products and integrations. He has been working in the software and storage industry for 20+ years. Barkz is the father of all things PowerShell at Pure Storage and manages our presence on GitHub at http://code.purestorage.com. He has been actively involved with the Storage Networking Industry Association and SMI Lab since 2014. Barkz participates in the Scalable Storage Management (aka Swordfish) Technical Working Group and SMI-S. 

Mark Carlson

Voting Member Company: Toshiba Memory
Title: Principal Engineer, Industry Standards
Length of Employment with Current Company: 4 years
Years of Storage Industry / IT Community Experience: 35+ years
Education: BSEE, Washington State University

Previous SNIA Service (Technical Working Groups, Forums, Initiatives, Committees, Board, TC, Task Forces, Projects):

• Lead the transition into SNIA and initial development of SMI-S, chairing the TSG in the early years.
• Chair of the policy TWG and management frameworks TWG.
• Lead the formation of the Cloud Storage TWG (Chair) and Cloud Storage Initiative (Vice Chair)
• Lead the formation of the Object Drive TWG (Chair)
• Co-chair Standards Committee
• Co-Chair, SNIA Technical Council

Employment History:

• Numerous storage and networking companies
• Helped start a small software company in Boulder, CO called Redcape Policy Software that was then acquired in 1998 by Sun Microsystems, Inc.
• Sun was acquired by Oracle in 2010
• Currently working for Toshiba Memory

Industry Achievement Awards:

• SMI Distinguished Engineer
• DMTF Star Award
• SNIA Industry Impact award

Your Motivation for Seeking This Seat:

I feel that I can continue to contribute to the SNIA as both a leader and champion of open interoperable standards and software. As storage technologies evolve, it is important that companies work together to increase the market adoption of these technologies and create standards to address customer pain points.  I will continue to serve as a catalyst for activities in the SNIA that return value to its members and benefit the industry.

Other Associations That You Are Currently Active With and In What Capacity:

• DMTF
• INCITS Cloud 38
• INCITS T10, T13
• NVM Express
• ISO/IEC JTC 1 SC 38
• Open Compute Project
• Open Fabrics Alliance

Potential Areas of Interest (Marketing, Work Groups, Standards, Interoperability, End User Council, Other):

• Cloud and Object (Drive)
• Hyperscaler/Datacenter Storage
• Redfish management of NVMe Drive
• Computational Storage

Biography:

Mark A. Carlson, Principal Engineer, Industry Standards at Toshiba Memory, has more than 35 years of experience with Networking and Storage development and more than twenty year's experience with Java technology. He has spoken at numerous industry forums and events. He has chaired the SNIA Object Drive, Cloud Storage, NDMP and XAM SDK technical working groups and serves as Co-Chairman on the SNIA Technical Council.

Fred Knight

Voting Member Company: NetApp, Inc.
Title: Principal Standards Technologist
Length of Employment with Current Company: 12 years 9 months
Years of Storage Industry / IT Community Experience: 41+ years
Education: BS

Previous SNIA Service (Technical Working Groups, Forums, Initiatives, Committees, Board, TC, Task Forces, Projects):

• TC member, Dictionary Contributor
• DI TWG, MMA TWG, HSI TWG chair
• NVM TWG observer, Object Drive TWG observer
• Speaker at multiple SDC conferences, SNW conferences, BrightTalk presentations, and FMS (Flash Memory Summit) presentations; delivered talks on FC, FCoE, SCSI, SAN, iSCSI, and NVMe.

Employment History:

Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) / Compaq / HP (1977 – 2005):

• Principal Instructor – Taught customers and employees programming, OS usage / management, support methods and internal design
• Consulting Software Engineer – Develop Operating System software for multiple OSes (proprietary and UNIX based systems) at multiple layers including device drivers (for SCSI, ATA, and proprietary devices), file systems, networks, system services, memory management, user interface, and high availability (clustering).

NetApp (2005 – present):

• Host Interoperability Architect – Drive interoperability of NetApp solutions across multiple host platforms to insure supportability, maintainability, and high customer satisfaction with NetApp storage solutions.
• Standards Technologist – Represent NetApp at various standards bodies (IETF, JEDEC, NVMe, SNIA, T10, T11, T13).  Work with various industry competitors and partners to bring new ideas (SCSI Copy Offload, SCSI Thin Provisioning, SCSI BIND/UNBIND for Vvols, FC Peer Zoning, etc) into the standards. Work at JEDEC to bring TCG security and encryption to NVDIMMs.
• Represent ANSI at ISO/IEC meetings as the T10 International Representative (IR), T13 IR, and ISO/IEC SC25/JTC1/WG4 Convenor.

Also see: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/frederick-knight/3/187/a9

Industry Achievement Awards:

• INCITS Technical Excellence Award for work at T10
• INCITS Technical Excellence Award for work at T11
• INCITS Merit Award for longstanding contributions to INCITS International work
• Also see: http://www.incits.org/news-events/annual-awards

Your Motivation for Seeking This Seat:

I would like to continue my involvement in SNIA to help provide support and guidance to the larger storage developer community, to increase the availability of additional storage standards, and broaden knowledge in the industry.

Other Associations That You Are Currently Active With and In What Capacity:

• INCITS T10 (SCSI) – contributor, Editor of SES-3 and SAM-6 standard, International Representative
• INCITS T11 (Fibre Channel) – contributor
• INCITS T13 (ATA) – contributor, International Representative
• JEDEC JC45.6 - contributor
• ISO/IEC JTC1 – International Representative for T10 and T13; JTC1/SC25/WG4 Convenor
• NVM Express - Board of Directors
• NVMe Consortium – contributor, Editor

Potential Areas of Interest (Marketing, Work Groups, Standards, Interoperability, End User Council, Other):

• Standards
• Education (including speaking @ SDC, and Brightalks)
• TWG oversite
• NVM Programming TWG
• Object Drive TWG

Anything Else the SNIA Should Be Aware Of:

I have management support to continue in my role on the TC.

Biography:

Frederick Knight is a Principal Standards Technologist at NetApp Inc. Fred has over 40 years of experience in the computer and storage industry.  He currently represents NetApp in several National and International Storage Standards bodies and industry associations, including T10 (SCSI), T11 (Fibre Channel), T13 (ATA), IETF (iSCSI), SNIA, and JEDEC.  He was the chair of the SNIA Hypervisor Storage Interfaces working group, the primary author of the SNIA HSI White Paper, the author of the new IETF iSCSI update RFC, and the editor for the T10 SES-3 standard.  He is also the editor for the SCSI Architecture Model (SAM-6) and the Convenor for the ISO/IEC JTC-1/SC25/WG4 international committee (which oversees the international standardization of T10/T11/T13 documents). Fred has received several NetApp awards for excellence and innovation as well as the INCITS Technical Excellence Award for his contributions to both T10 and T11 and the INCITS Merit Award for his longstanding contributions to the international work of INCITS.

He is also the developer of the first native FCoE target device in the industry.  At NetApp, he contributes to technology and product strategy and serves as a consulting engineer to product groups across the company. Prior to joining NetApp, Fred was a Consulting Engineer with Digital Equipment Corporation, Compaq, and HP where he worked on clustered operating system and I/O subsystem design.

Peter Murray

Voting Member Company: Virtual Instruments
Title: Principal Systems Engineer / Technical Evangelist
Length of Employment with Current Company: 9 years
Years of Storage Industry / IT Community Experience: 13 + years Storage Industry, 27 years networking and security
Education: Multiple certifications in networking and server technologies, MCSE 2013

Previous SNIA Service (Technical Working Groups, Forums, Initiatives, Committees, Board, TC, Task Forces, Projects):

• Co-chair, Solid State Storage System Technical Working Group (2014-2017)
• Member, Solid State Storage System Technical Working Group (2017)
• Co-chair, Solid State Storage System Technical Working Group (2018)
• Member, Workload Technical Working Group (2017)
• Co-chair, Workload Technical Working Group (2018)
• Member, Technical Council (2014-present)

Employment History:

• Virtual Instruments/Load DynamiX/SwiftTest - Principal SE, Technical Evangelist, Product Specialist, Product Manager (9+ years)
• F5 Networks - Technical Marketing Manager covering WAN acceleration, geographic load balancing, server load balancing, web application optimization and web application access security (1 1/2 years)
• Spirent Communications - Technical Marketing Engineer covering L2-7 testing, network and Application threat testing, WAN impairment injection (5 years)
• Nortel Networks/Bay Networks/SynOptics Communications - Product Manager (L2-L4 routing and switching), Principal Technical Sales Support Analyst performing opportunity support, document production and speaking engagements at the level of a product manager (10/100/1000 Ethernet switching and routing, remote access, server load balancing, SSL security and network management), Instructor (10 years)
• Cabletron Systems - Presale Systems Engineer and postsale Field Engineer (2 years)
• Western Digital - Technical Support Engineer and Networking Consultant performing installation/troubleshooting of WD Network Division (2 years)
• Independent networking, systems and applications consultant (7 years)

Industry Achievement Awards:

• MCSE (2003)
• CompTIA Security + (2003)
• Citrix Certified Technical Consultant (2003)
• VMware Certified Consultant (2003)
• Certified Sun Microsystems Instructor (1992, 1994)
• Certified SynOptics Instructor (1992, 1994)
• Novell Certified Netware Engineer (1986-1991)
• Novell Certified Consultant (1984-1986)

Your Motivation for Seeking This Seat:

The SNIA Technical Council offers me the opportunity to share my passion for and knowledge of the storage networking industry. The seat additionally offers me a means to share my knowledge of testing storage arrays and monitoring data center networks to a wide audience.

I bring a perspective from both the vendor and end-user communities in both networking and storage technology that I believe to be an asset to SNIA in advancing Storage Networking technologies and initiatives.

I believe the wide scope of my networking and storage experience, especially with regard to my membership on the SNIA Technical Council has benefited SNIA, and I look forward to continuing my service.

Other Associations That You Are Currently Active With and In What Capacity:

• Flash Memory Summit speaker and technical resource

Potential Areas of Interest (Marketing, Work Groups, Standards, Interoperability, End User Council, Other):

• Solid state storage systems
• Cloud data center architecture
• Green computing
• Actual and virtualized storage array, storage network, and data center architecture
• NVM technology and programming
• Object, SAN and NAS technology and testing

Anything Else the SNIA Should Be Aware Of:

I have participated as an SDC speaker and SMB plugfest attendee, as a speaker and plugfest attendee at the Microsoft Open Protocols plugfest since 2009, and as a DSI panel speaker from 2014 to 2016. I have presented, served as a panel speaker, and served as an expert table leader at the Flash Memory Summit from 2013 to 2017.

Biography:

Peter Murray serves as Principal Systems Engineer and Technical Evangelist at Virtual Instruments Inc. He additionally serves as co-chair of the SNIA Solid State Storage System Technical Working Group, as co-chair of the SNIA Workload Technical Working Group and as a member of the SNIA Technical Council.

Peter is an expert with over 35 years of experience testing, implementing, troubleshooting, and maintaining secure, fast, and highly available storage systems and networks.

In his role as Principal SE/Technical Evangelist, Peter works with customers, prospective customers, and partners to ensure Virtual Instruments storage performance validation and monitoring products meet market requirements and are used to maximum benefit.

Prior to Virtual Instruments, Peter served on technical teams at network equipment manufacturers and network, security and storage device testing equipment manufacturers, including F5 Networks, Spirent Communications, and Nortel Networks.

Steve Wilson

Voting Member Company: Broadcom
Title: Director of Technology and Standards
Length of Employment with Current Company: Broadcom/BSN 18 Years
Years of Storage Industry / IT Community Experience: 39 Years
Education: Degree in Computer Science from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo

Previous SNIA Service (Technical Working Groups, Forums, Initiatives, Committees, Board, TC, Task Forces, Projects):

Steve has been involved with the SNIA since 1998. He established and chaired the SNIA Fibre Channel Work Group in its various forms, contributed to the Green and Dictionary activities, and now serves as an advisor to the SNIA Technical Council. Steve also serves as principal liaison between the FCIA/T11 and the SNIA.

Employment History:

1979 to Present. Prior to Broadcom, Steve held technical leadership positions with Brocade, Amdahl, ISS/Sperry Univac, Memorex, and Trilogy Systems. The emphasis of his technical work at these companies was the development and implementation of computer, storage, and systems management technologies.

Industry Achievement Awards:

Steve is the recipient of the INCITS Technical Excellence Award for his work on the Fibre Channel switching standards, and has received the INCITS Gene Milligan award for effective committee management. In addition I have received numerous awards for my SNIA contributions.

Your Motivation for Seeking This Seat:

To further develop storage networking technologies to address the new and emerging business applications.

Other Associations That You Are Currently Active With and In What Capacity:

• Chairman, INCITS TC T11
• FCIA Board Member
• SNIA Technical Council, Advisor

Potential Areas of Interest (Marketing, Work Groups, Standards, Interoperability, End User Council, Other):

Storage Architectures

Biography:

Steve Wilson is Director of Technology and Standards at Broadcom. Steve’s responsibilities include the development of technologies and architectures for storage networking and storage management. Steve is a principal contributor to the ANSI T11 Fibre Channel standards and SNIA technical activities.

Prior to Broadcom, Steve held technical leadership positions with Brocade, Amdahl, ISS/Sperry Univac, Memorex, and Trilogy Systems. The emphasis of his technical work at these companies was the development and implementation of computer, storage, and systems management technologies.

Steve serves as chairman of the INCITS T11 committee whose charter is to develop the Fibre Channel Interfaces. Steve continues contributing to many ANSI Fibre Channel standards including FC-NVMe, Switch Fabric, Fabric Services and the FC-RDMA. Steve also serves on the Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA) Board of Directors.

Steve has been involved with the SNIA since 1998. He established and chaired the SNIA Fibre Channel Work Group in its various forms, contributed to the Green and Dictionary activities, and now serves as an advisor to the SNIA Technical Council. Steve also serves as principal liaison between the FCIA/T11 and the SNIA.

Steve is the recipient of the INCITS Technical Excellence Award for his work on the Fibre Channel switching standards, and has received the INCITS Gene Milligan award for effective committee management. Steve holds multiple patents in the storage networking space and holds a degree in Computer Science from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.