-by Warren Smith

The Storage Networking Industry Association Executive Director, Leo Leger, announced last week that the most recent individual to gain elite recognition in the storage association’s Achievement Hall of Fame is HP’s John Wilkes. John is just the 2^nd storage professional to be so honored. And we at HP are obviously proud of John and his many contributions to the storage industry and to SNIA. John Wilkes’ contributions included his key role in formulating the Shared Storage Model, long before many people shared storage amongst hosts, and preserving with the SMI-S management interface standard.

With apologies to Humphrey Bogart’s for hatcheting one of his famous line, “Of all the gin joints, and all the plugfests, in all the towns where SNIA assembled storage lab rats, John Wilkes walked in one day and immediately raised the reputation of the joint.”

John is an HP Fellow at HP Labs today, continuing to deliver the best storage engineering on the face of the planet. We salute John and Roger Reich, formerly of many organizations and now President and CEO of his own company, Olocity, as the exhaustive list of honorees to the "Hall of Fame". (No, it’s not a misprint. There are not yet any individuals from three letter companies in the Hall, or from that company with the South Park-esque logo (like maybe an upside down U). What can we say? The competition to get into the Hall is tough! This is one award that no money can buy. Sorry Joe!)

Link to SNIA’s Hall of Fame page: http://www.snia.org/about/profiles