Moshe Yanai

Moshe Yanai (Hebrew: משה ינאי; born 1949) is an Israeli electrical engineer. He is an inventor,[1] businessman, entrepreneur,[2] aviator,[3] investor,[2][4] and philanthropist.[5][6] He led the development of the EMC Symmetrix, the flagship product of EMC Corporation in the 1990s, which prevented, to some extent, financial chaos in New York Stock Exchange and certain banks after the September 11 attacks, as further detailed below.[7]

Biography

Moshe Yanai was born in 1949 in Israel, and earned a B.Sc. in electrical engineering in 1975 from Technion - Israel Institute of Technology.[2]

Elbit-Nixdorf project

Yanai began his career building IBM-compatible mainframe data storage based on minicomputer disks for Elbit Systems (a joint project with Nixdorf Computer). He went on to develop high-end storage systems for Nixdorf in the United States.[2]

EMC Corporation

Yanai joined EMC Corporation in 1987, and managed the Symmetrix development, software and hardware, from its inception in the late 1980s[8] until shortly before leaving EMC in 2001.[9] His development team grew from several people, recruited among his former Israeli colleagues, to thousands, while he was vice president.[8] As a result, EMC grew in the 1990s, both in size and value, from a company with a fading business of (minicomputer) computer memory boards, valued in several millions of dollars, to a hundreds-of-billions company.[10][11] Before leaving Yanai became an EMC Fellow.[9]

Yanai led the development of the EMC Symmetrix, the flagship product of EMC Corporation in the 1990s, which was a first scalable network storage system in the market. EMC Symmetrix hardware and its SRDF (Symmetrix remote data facility) software placed EMC Corporation as "the most dominnat force in all of the storage industry".[12] The  Symmetrix network storage scalability made it the father of current cloud storage, essential in mamy avenues of online and big data technologies.[13] The role of Yanai's contribution was described by 2001 ESG report by : ”the person most responsible for architecting the single most successful product in subsystem history (Symmetrix) has been Moshe Yanai".[12]

Enterprises such as banks who depend on performance and big data found Symmetrix to be essential for their work. Later on, Symmetrix remote replication feature prevented financial chaos in New York Stock Exchange and certain banks after the September 11 attacks, as described by Barron's who called the SRDF “the true hero of 9/11”. This appreciation of Symmetrix and SDRF is based on the fact that "EMC has 25 customers in the World Trade Center... with another dozen in the immediate vicinity".[7] The New York Stock Exchange and several important banks were among these 25 customers.

Diligent Technologies and XIV

Yanai co-founded Diligent Technologies in Israel as an R&D center for EMC.[4] Yanai also funded and led an Israeli storage startup company, XIV,[14] which was bought by IBM in January 2008. IBM paid an estimated $300 million for a company invested in with an estimated $3 million.[15] Shortly later, in April 2008, IBM also bought Diligent Technologies.[16][4] Yanai continued leading XIV[17] and became an IBM Fellow,[18] while IBM XIV Storage System became an IBM storage product.[19] Yanai left IBM in 2010.[2]

INFINDAT

In 2011, Yanai founded Infinidat, a computer data storage company. In 2011, Infinidat announced Moshe became its CEO.[20] In April 2015, Infinidat announced a $150 million investment led by TPG Capital.[21] This investment placed it among the most valuable privately held companies.[22] He also has been a board of directors member of several companies.[8]

Patents

Yanai is an inventor or co-inventor of about 40 US patents in the field of electronic data storage.[1] For example only, two patents granted to EMC and invented by Yanai etal are:

  1. US 5,390,313 granted February 14, 1995, titled "Data storage with data mirroring and reduced access time data retrieval".
  2. US 5,544,347 granted August 6, 1996, titled " Data storage controlled remote data mirroring with respectively maintained data indices".

Awards and recognition

References

  1. 1 2 USPTO search (1 December 2022). "40 data storage US patents".
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 "ינאי נתן, ינאי לקח - Yanai gave, Yanai took" Calcalist, September 7, 2010 (In Hebrew; a printer friendly version here; for an English version use, e.g., Google Web-page translation). Retrieved 11-11-2010.
  3. ↑ "הג'וב החדש של משה ינאי: יטיס אנשי עסקים במסוק - The new job of Moshe Yanai: Will fly businessmen by helicopter" TheMarker, September 2, 2010 (in Hebrew; for a printer friendly version click here; for an English version use, e.g., Google Web-page translation). Retrieved 11-13-2010.
  4. 1 2 3 "EMC transfers its R&D to Diligent" HA'ARETZ, November 12, 2002 (for a printer friendly version click here). Retrieved 11-13-2010.
  5. ↑ "Mr Nice Guy" Archived 2011-08-16 at the Wayback Machine TechnionFOCUS, October 2010. Retrieved 12-16-2010.
  6. ↑ "New bird research fund to take flight next week" The Jerusalem Post 11/29/2010.
  7. 1 2 Bill Alpert and Mark Veverka (24 September 2001). "Mission Critical - A blanket of hesitation". BARRON's. Retrieved 2 December 2022.
  8. 1 2 3 Axxana board of directors Archived 2010-01-20 at the Wayback Machine See Moshe Yanai. Retrieved 2-26-2011.
  9. 1 2 3 EMC Company Web site, November 29, 2001: "EMC Strengthens Operational Alignment" See paragraph about Moshe Yanai. Retrieved 10-24-2010.
  10. ↑ EMC Company Web site, July 19, 2000: "EMC Reports 43% Growth in Storage Revenue, First $2 Billion Quarter" Retrieved 10-24-2010.
  11. ↑ EMC Corp. at Yahoo Stock - Historical Prices Retrieved 04-30-2015.
  12. 1 2 Enterprise Storage Group (1 November 2001). "ESG Analysis of EMC departure". Retrieved 2 December 2022.
  13. 1 2 IEEE Reynold B, Johnson Information Storage System Award Fund. "Moshe Yanai". Retrieved 2 December 2022.
  14. ↑ XIV Storage Web site Archived 2012-09-19 at archive.today Retrieved 11-11-2010.
  15. ↑ "Why did IBM buy XIV? IBM's XIV Purchase background", TecWorld, January 4, 2008. Retrieved 11-11-2010.
  16. ↑ IBM Company Web site: Press release 18 April 2008 IBM Acquires Storage Company Diligent Technologies Retrieved 3-1-2011.
  17. ↑ XIV Storage Web site: about Archived 2010-11-19 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved 2-26-2011.
  18. 1 2 IBM Company Web site: IBM Fellow Moshe Yanai, Retrieved 11-11-2010.
  19. ↑ IBM Company Web site: IBM XIV Storage System Retrieved 3-1-2011.
  20. ↑ "Infinidat Announces $150 Million Investment Led by TPG, Eclipses $1B Valuation".
  21. ↑ INFINIDAT Website, April 30, 2015: a $150 million investment "Infinidat Announces $150 Million Investment Led by TPG, Eclipses $1B Valuation" Retrieved 04-30-2015.
  22. ↑ Wall Street Journal, April 30, 2015: "Data Storage Startup Infinidat Raises $150 Million at $1.2 Billion Valuation" Retrieved 04-30-2015.
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