A seasoned entrepreneur within the storage market. Mark spearheaded the evolution of Software Defined Storage, triggering the early development of Linux based iSCSI, Fibre Channel and InfiniBand as well as early adoption storage solutions ranging from Europe’s first Virtual Tape Library which pioneered professional level disk-based backup. Mark later went on to develop cutting-edge ultra-performance All Flash Arrays in partnership with innovative flash vendors such as Fusion-io, delivering a new breed of application accelerators and changing by a magnitude what was considered as fast.

Three exits to global storage vendors.

Computer Design Group Plc (CDG), Mark’s initial storage company formed in 1991 pioneered many of the early SCSI RAID appliances used within the market and had OEM agreements with the likes of Sun Microsystems, developing storage solutions for fast emerging markets such as the Sun Telco range. CDG was acquired by Tandberg Data ASA in 2005 for its recently introduced BakStor technology, the first EU software designed iSCSI 1U disk-based backup and VTL that sold globally and changed the standard for backup and recovery expectations. Most modern backup solutions have evolved from the concepts introduced within the BakStor.

Following Tandberg, Mark formed ID7 Limited and SCST Limited, which were both acquired in 2013 by Fusion-io, the creators of what is still considered the pioneer of later generations of flash technology, particularly NVMe. With Fusion-io’s highly skilled team and resources, Mark was able to globalise the new generation of All Flash Array which ID7 and SCST Limited had been working upon, the result being a software defined appliance, ION, which delivered never before seen levels of performance and change the industry benchmark as to what was defined as fast.

The ION was adopted by the world’s largest banks, government institutions and is still today manufactured and used within critical applications throughout the world.

Fusion-io and the ION were later acquired by Scandisk and then Western Digital.

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