Next Page: Karen Dutch, NEC
Karen Dutch, general manager of the Advanced Storage Products Group at NEC Corp. of America, has played a major role in articulating the use of backup automation and grid storage technology at her company and elsewhere.
Dutch, who has a bachelor's degree in computer science and mathematics from Duke University, began her career as a systems programmer in the storage division of IBM in 1977, where she worked on the companys first automation and system managed storage projects. She moved on to Brocade Communications in 1999, where she was solutions marketing director working on SAN solutions, then to SAN software startup InterSAN in 2001, where she was vice president of marketing when that company went public in 2002. InterSAN received backing from IBM and other storage heavyweights, and then in 2002 the company went public.
In the summer of 2003, Dutch moved to Softek, where she led efforts to create and market that companys automated storage solutions, which were aimed at easing the management of multivendor grid storage infrastructures. Later, Softek, which was spun out of Fujitsu in 2004, was acquired by IBM in March 2007.
By the time that occurred, though, Dutch was at NEC, where she started as entrepreneur in residence in April 2005 before becoming general manager of Advanced Storage Products, responsible for developing and marketing the companys next-generation storage wares.