Mark Carlson Passed Away

This information was published by SNIA.

It is with an extremely heavy heart for SNIA colleagues and friends to learn of the sudden passing of fellow SNIA member, Mark Carlson, on May 3, 2023.

He has been a pillar of SNIA technical work for the last 23 years. He was first elected to serve on SNIA’s Technical Council (TC) in 2000, and served on the TC ever since. He was elected vice-chair of the TC in 2005, and served as either TC chair or co-Chair for 15 of those 23 years, guiding the execution of SNIA’s technical mission.

His extensive roles and contributions to SNIA Technical Work Groups (TWGs), forums, initiatives, and educational mission included Cloud Storage TWG Co-Chair, Object Drive TWG Chair, Standards Committee Co-Chair, and leader of content development for SNIA’s global Storage Developer Conferences, to name but a few.

He was recognized many times by the SNIA board of directors for his valuable contributions with the SNIA Industry Impact Award.

He was a technology evangelist with a remarkable breadth and depth of technical knowledge. His ability to foster and lead technical work within SNIA was unique. He believed in the benefits that industry standards delivered and personally worked on or authored the SNIA Cloud Data Management Interface (CDMI), Native NVMe-oF Drive spec, Storage Management Initiative spec (SMI-S) and Key Value Storage API. His work on industry standards had a global impact with many standards becoming international standards through ISO/IEC.

His thought leadership was recognized and valued by the industry, and he was a frequent keynote speaker at conferences around the world, including SNIA Storage Developer Conference, which he actively helped to produce each year.

In addition to SNIA, he lent his talents to many industry standards bodies. Anyone who has had anything to do with storage in the past 20 years owes at least some debt of gratitude to him. SNIA was particularly blessed to have him contribute not only to many technical standards, but also lead the Technical Council for many years. His influence will be felt for years to come.

Dr. J Metz, chair, SNIA board of directors, said: “Mark was well-known and highly-respected across the industry. He held a BS in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science from Washington State University. His career spanned more than four decades with engineering positions at technology-leading companies, including Sun Microsystems, Oracle, Fujitsu, and most recently at Kioxia, where he was a principal engineer, industry standards. Mark was an author and patent holder. He was a man of great intellect with many varied interests. In addition to technology, he was passionate about nature and animals, making craft beer, beekeeping, and Japanese art and culture – a true Renaissance man. Mark was a true technology icon and one of the giants at SNIA. He will be deeply missed by his SNIA family and the industry at large.”