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Storage Bridge Bay (SBB) Elects Mark Hall of Xyratex as New Chairman

SBB Design and Specification Overview Tracks Featured at Intel Developer Forum and SNIA Storage Developer Conference

Intel Developer Forum (IDF) -- The Storage Bridge Bay (SBB) Working Group Board of Directors today announced the appointment of Mark Hall, senior worldwide product manager at Xyratex, as its new Chairman. Hall succeeds Dr. William Dawkins, senior technology strategist in Dell's Office of the CTO.

"We look forward to Mark's leadership and the fresh perspective he will bring to the SBB Working Group," said Dawkins. "Mark has been very active in the organization and as chairman will continue to grow the SBB ecosystem and drive the simplification of the engineering and design process for storage system providers."

As a veteran of the storage industry, Hall has launched enterprise-class solid state storage at start-up Solid Data Systems; headed the rollout of first-generation Fibre Channel SAN while at Hitachi Data Systems; and pioneered hard drive "emergency recovery CD" software while at Softbank. Hall has also been a consultant to Fortune 500 companies including Ford Motor Company and Rockwell Collins. Hall is an active participant on the SNIA Green Storage Initiative and Technical Working Group. He holds a bachelor's of science in Computer Science and an MBA in Marketing.

"On behalf of the entire board of directors I want to thank the immediate past board members for all of their contributions," said Hall. "During their term, SBB achieved a number of significant milestones and the growing number of products that utilize the SBB specification is a good measure of their success."

In addition to Hall, the current SBB Board of Directors includes: Dr. William Dawkins, Dell; Bob Beauchamp, EMC; Andy McNeill, IBM; Brad Corrion, Intel Corporation; John Szantho, LSI; Bob Hansen, NetApp; and John Visser, Sun Microsystems.

At the Intel Developer Forum being held in the Moscone Center in San Francisco, Hall will join Brad Corrion, product marketing engineer at Intel, in presenting a session titled "Designing Storage Systems with Storage Bridge Bay (SBB) 2.0, Intel® Architecture, and the SBB Ecosystem." The session is being held at 9:45 a.m. on August 19 in room 2007.

In an effort to help storage industry professionals understand where the SBB specification is heading, Hall will also present a "SBB 2.0 Specification Overview" on Monday, September 22 from 8:45 a.m. - 9:45 a.m. at the SNIA Storage Developer Conference being held in the Santa Clara Hyatt Regency Hotel.

Since the original SBB 1.0 ratification in September 2006, the total membership has grown 52 percent from 31 to 47 members. Promoter Members and members of the Board of Directors of the SBB Working Group include: Dell, EMC, IBM, Intel Corporation, LSI, NetApp, Sun Microystems and Xyratex. In addition, the SBB Working Group is supported by the following Contributor Members: Accusys, Adaptec, AIC, AMD, AMCC Storage, Aristos Logic, Astute Networks, ATTO Technology, Celestica, Chenbro, Ciprico, Digi-Data, Dot Hill Systems, Emulex, EqualLogic, FCI, Flextronics, Foxconn, Infortrend, Inspur (Beijing), Inventec Enterprise System Corporation (IESC), iStor Networks, Jabil, Lanner, Mellanox Technologies, MiTAC, NEC, Neterion, Newisys Data Storage, Nextronics Engineering (Leanpac Division), PMC-Sierra, Promise Technology, Qsan Technology, Quanta Computer, RASILIENT Systems, Seagate, Tyco Electronics, Universal Scientific Industrial (USI), and Wistron.

About the SBB Specification

The SBB specification defines mechanical, electrical and low-level enclosure management interfaces for a controller slot or "bridge bay" within a storage enclosure. With the ability to accommodate a variety of bridge/controller cards across a broader selection of storage solution providers, storage vendors and suppliers benefit faster time-to-market, lower development costs, and flexible storage solutions. Storage end-users benefit from decreased costs and earlier access to new storage technology.

About SBB

The SBB Working Group is a cooperative, non-profit organization comprised of a range of IT leaders representing the storage industry. The SBB working group is focused on expanding membership and invites other companies to participate. To learn more about the SBB working group, visit www.sbbwg.org.

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