Mike Kazar Recipient of 2013 IEEE Reynold B. Johnson Information Storage Systems Award

Avere Systems, Inc. announced that its CTO and co-founder Mike Kazar was named the recipient of the 2013 IEEE Reynold B. Johnson Information Storage Systems Award for his outstanding contributions to information storage systems.

For more than a century, the IEEE, the world’s largest technical professional association, has sponsored various programs to honor achievements in education, industry, research and service. The organization’s awards and recognitions each have a unique mission and criteria, and offer the opportunity to praise distinguished colleagues, dedicated teachers and corporate leaders who have made a lasting impact on humanity, technology and the profession. Established in 1992, the IEEE Johnson Award is given on the basis of achievements in computer storage as judged by the impact and historical significance on the evolution of computer storage systems.

The award further validates Kazar’s expertise in network file system architectures. Over the course of his career, Kazar has been responsible for driving the technology vision and architecture of multiple entrepreneurial endeavors. His role at Avere is leading the development of the company’s NAS optimization architecture that helps organizations build high-performance NAS infrastructures at a fraction of the cost and footprint of standard storage architectures, delivering superior business agility.

mike_kazar_avere_ieee_award_01 Previous to Avere, Kazar was VP and chief architect at NetApp working on Data ONTAP GX, the technology he developed while co-founder and CTO at Spinnaker Networks. Before Spinnaker, he was a distinguished engineer at FORE Systems working on LAN Emulation for ATM and several Ethernet to ATM bridge products. Prior to FORE, he co-founded and served as chief file system architect at Transarc Corporation (now part of IBM). Earlier in his career, Kazar worked on versions of Carnegie Mellon University’s Andrew File System as well as the Andrew Toolkit, an OLE-like windowing toolkit.

"I am very honored and humbled to have received such a prestigious recognition as the IEEE Johnson Award for my contributions to the data storage industry," said Kazar. "I have been fortunate to have worked and collaborated with other outstanding individuals who have been able to help deliver my vision of a better network file system architecture to the marketplace. And though this is considered a lifetime achievement award, be assured that I’m not one to rest on my laurels. The best is yet to come."

Kazar earned an S.B. in Mathematics and an S.B. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in Computer Science.

Past winners of Reynold B. Johnson
Information Storage Systems Award: