Jeff Kato Email & Phone Number

Fort Collins, Co, Us

Owner of a consulting business focused on providing Information Technology advice and analysis specializing in the area of Converged Infrastructure and Backup and Restore Technologies.

Hopkinton, Ma, Us

Currently providing industry analysis focusing in the area of Converged Infrastructure for Taneja Group and their clients.

Recently took early retirement from HP and currently exploring opportunities in the Storage Industry along with other options. I have extensive senior management experience in area of leading global R&D teams and managing a large business within a corporate setting. I also have managed strategic alliances and have extensive connections in the storage industry as a whole.

Houston, Texas, Us

• Managed business development with both internal and external partners of HP Storage. Responsible for strengthening relationships and developing joint solutions that helped both HP and partners to succeed together in the marketplace.• Senior Alliance manager working with HP Enterprise Services with a focus on the introduction and use of HP's storage portfolio in HP Enterprise Services managed storage offering.• Managed a project with SAP on integrating HP storage into SAP's Landscape Virtual Manager (LVM).• Managed a project with Taneja Group and VMware on a joint vCloud Director and 3PAR initiative.

Houston, Texas, Us

• Director of Development for HP Storage StoreOnce Deduplication Disk Backup products.• Responsible for managing a global engineering team of >200 resources with an annual budget of >$20M. • Responsible for developing the first two generations of StoreOnce deduplication software in collaboration with HP Labs. • Managed a strategic partnership in developing enterprise virtual library systems.

Houston, Texas, Us

• Responsible for a business group to develop and manage the tape automation business for HP. Also included the optical jukebox archive business and emerging virtual tape library business.• Directly managed a global workforce of ~100 people with annual budgets of up to $20 million. Product revenue of ~$400M annually.• Managed directly both the R&D and product marketing teams.• Transformed the business from a low profitability to a consistently high profitability.• Grew the business to an industry leading market share of 30+% in tape automation.• Maintained business relationships with industry partners such as SUN, Quantum, BDT, Overland Storage, Crossroads Systems, and Sepaton.

Houston, Texas, Us

• Responsible for an engineering section that develops tape library solutions for both commercial and enterprise market segments (heterogeneous tape SAN solutions, ISV development, tape manageability and diagnostic software development, whole product certification, learning products)• Directly managed 45 people with an annual budget of $4.5 million• Transformed R&D group into highly efficient development organization including a transition to outsourcing of some software development to India.• Responsible for managing relationships with strategic development partners StorageTek and Crossroads Systems

Houston, Texas, Us

Managed multiple engineering projects and programs for the storage group at HP including the following:• Managed direct teams of typically up to ten employees that included program managers and engineers.• Program managed the enterprise tape library business of HP including managing the strategic technical relationship with StorageTek.• Managed solution teams for tape libraries that included ISV integration, HP-UX connect, and development of interface technologies such as Fibre channel and SCSI.• Managed a team to develop an industry standard software/hardware archive appliance product based on Linux servers combined with optical jukeboxes. • Managed a software team in developing diagnostics for improved quality and CPE support.• Successfully managed mechanical, electrical, firmware and software engineer’s during this time.• Managed third party development partnerships and helped negotiate several software contracts during this time.

Houston, Texas, Us

• Led and developed embedded firmware for magneto-optical based libraries.• Managed technical relationship with IBM during OEM development of optical libraries.• Designed and implemented the first commercially available data compression custom integrated circuit based on Lempel-Ziv. 5 patents granted on this design.• Developed firmware for the product that utilized this data compression chip in tape products.• Developed the phase lock loop subsystem for ½ inch reel-to-reel tape based products, including a custom integrated circuit• Worked on read channel and write formatter for ½ inch tape product

Certificate, Executive Development Program

Bs, Electrical Engineering