The MVPs in History of WW Storage Industry

Comments

The IEEE Reynold B. Johnson Information Storage Systems Award is
probably the most prestigious recompense in the worldwide data storage
industry. Reynold B. Johnson was heading the IBM's team that designed
the first HDD in 1956.

Which ones are missing
in the IEEE list published below?
We think about:

• Jesse Aweida (StorageTek),
• Georges Broussaud (Thomson CSF),
• Michael R. Cannon (Maxtor),
• Klaas Compaan and Pieter Kramer  (Philips)
• Finis F. Conner (Conner Peripherals),
• John F. Coyne (Western Digital)
• 
  Jerome Drexler (LaserCard)
• Richard J. 'Dick' Egan and Michael C. Ruettgers, EMC,
• Albert Fert and Peter Grünberg (2007 Physics Nobel Prize for GMR),
• David Paul Gregg (Gauss Electrophysics),
• Stanford R. Ovshinsky (Energy Conversion Devices),
• James N. Porter (Disk/Trend),
• Philip Rice (Stanford Research Institute),
• Juan Rodriguez (Exabyte),
• James Russell (Optical Recording Corp.), and
• Daniel J. Warmenhoven (NetApp).

On the total of 41 people chosen by IEEE and by us, 73% are from USA, 20% from Europe and 7% from Asia. With six names (or 15%), IBM is the most represented company. No woman at all.

Complete list of the recipients
of IEEE Reynold B. Johnson
Information Storage Systems Award

• 2012 - Dr. Naoya Takahashi, President and CEO of Hitachi Electronics
  Services Co., Ltd. - For advancement of storage technologies through the
  development of architecture of storage systems and control instructions
  micro-codes.
• 2011 - Not awarded
• 2010 - Moshe Yanai, IBM Fellow, IBM Corporation Waltham, MA, USA - For
  sustained innovation and legendary leadership in development of
  clustered global cache storage architectures and business continuity
  solutions that have defined the enterprise storage industry.
• 2009 - Marshall Kirk MC Kusick, Independent Consultant Berkeley, CA, USA
  - For fundamental contributions in file system design, mentoring file
  system designers, and disseminating file system research.
• 2008 - Alan J. Smith, Professor, University of California at Berkeley,
  Berkeley, CA, USA - For contributions to the performance analysis of
  computer storage systems, including improvements to disk caches,
  prefetching and data placement
• 2007 - Dave Hitz, Executive VP and Co-Founder, Network Appliance, Sunnyvale, CA, and James
  Lau, Chief Strategy Officer, Executive VP, Co-Founder, Network
  Appliance, Sunnyvale, CA - For innovation in file system technology,
  leading to the development of network file server appliances.
• 2006 - Jaisghankar M. Menon, Director of Storage Systems Architecture and Design, IBM, San Jose, CA -
  For pioneering work in the theory and application of RAID storage
  systems.
• 2005 - François B. Dolivo, Manager, Pervasive Computing Group IBM Zurich
  Research Laboratory Ruschlikon, Switzerland - For the application of
  digital signal processing to the magnetic recording channel in hard disk
  drives.
• 2004 - Bruca A. Gurney, Manager, Recording Head and Nanostructure
  Materials Group - Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, San Jose, CA, and
  Virgil S. Speriosu, Retired, Dix Hills, NY - For key technical
  contributions to the development of spin valve giant magnetoresistive
  recording heads for computer data storage devices.
• 2003 - H. Neal Bertram, Endowed Chair and Professor, Univ of
  California-San Diego, La Jolla, CA - For fundamental and pioneering
  contributions to magnetic recording physics research, applications and
  education.
• 2002 - Chistopher H. Bajorek, Komag, Inc., San Jose, CA - For leadership
  in the development and manufacturing of magnetoresistive recording
  heads for data storage devices.
• 2001 - Tu Chen, Komag, Incorporated, San Jose, CA - For leadership in
  the advancement of thin-film materials, tools, and processes used for
  magnetic information disks, and their commercialization as products.
• 2000 - Mark H. Kryder, Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA - For
  leadership in data storage research and education as founding director
  of the Carnegie-Mellon Magnetics Technology Center and Data Storage
  Systems Center.
• 1999 - David A. Patterson and Randy A. Katz, University of California,
  Berkeley, CA, and Garth A. Gibson, Carnegie Mellon University,
  Pittsburgh, PA - For the development of the Redundant Array of
  Inexpensive Disks systems.
• 1998 - Jean-Pierre Lazzari, Silmag, St. Egreve, France - For
  contributions and key innovations in media and heads for magnetic disk
  drives.
• 1997 - Alan F. Shugart, Seagate Technology, Scotts Valley, CA - For leadership in the evolution of disk drive technology.
• 1996 - Notubake Imamura, Tosoh Corporation, Kanagawa-ken, Japan - For
  contributions to research, development, and commercialization of
  magneto-optic recording media and drive systems.
• 1995 - James U. Lemke, Recording Physics, Inc., San Diego, CA - For
  contributions to advancing the science and technology of high density
  magnetic data storage.
• 1994 - Denis Mee, IBM Corp., San Jose, CA - For contributions to the
  design of optical, magneto-optical, and magnetic recording files.
• 1993 - John M. Harker, IBM Labs., San Jose, CA - For leadership in the
  development of information storage devices, including key contributions
  to the design of many generations of magnetic disk files.