David Hitz
| /**/ /**/ |
Back in the early 1990s, Dave Hitz had an epiphany that would change his life: Sharing data across a network didn't have to be complicated.
\
\
\
Slide Show: David Hitz
At the time a senior engineer at Auspex Systems, which built special-purpose, proprietary hardware to serve up files that resided across the network outside the servers, Hitz and his then-boss James Lau were convinced there was a simpler way to handle network-attached storage. So the two struck out on their own to form their own company, Network Appliance.
\
\
There, they created a single-function appliance with integrated hardware and
that simplified
in much the same way Cisco Systems had simplified
with its integrated switches. Today, the company is aggressively building out its value-added channel, and roughly 50 percent of its North America sales currently flow through VARs, according to high-level channel executives.
\
\
The difference between an appliance, designed to do one task, and a server, designed to handle a variety of different tasks, is pretty simple, Hitz says. "What's the difference between a toaster and an oven?" he asks. "You can make toast in an oven, but the toaster can only do toast."
\
\
Yet in the early 1990s, the idea of simplifying network file sharing was a tough concept to sell, says Hitz, now an executive vice president at NetApp, Sunnyvale, Calif. "We told venture capitalists about the technology," he says. "They asked us, does it do more than [Sun Microsystems' Network
System protocol]? We said, 'No, we do less.' We strung the VCs along for a year. We shipped product a year before we got VC funding."
\
\
While Hitz and Lau together moved from Auspex to NetApp, and co-authored most of the related Auspex and NetApp patents, Hitz was the guy who really made the idea of
understandable to an industry that craved simpler
solutions.
\
\
"The thing so interesting about what Dave had to say about NAS and NetApp at the time was simplicity," says Clod Barrera, chief technical strategist for system storage at IBM, Armonk, N.Y. "He was hiding the complexity of storage from the user."
\
\
Barrera, who was involved in recent negotiations that resulted in IBM signing an agreement to resell nearly all of NetApp's hardware and software products, said he has known Hitz for about 10 years, often sharing an evangelical role with him on storage industry panels. During that time, Hitz stuck to a simple message and became known for telling audiences that since they already understood
and networking, they could extend into
with relatively little effort, Barrera says.
| /**/ /**/ |
"Dave stood up and said this could be done simply, without a lot of Ph.D.'s running around," he says. "By contrast, Auspex had a lot of Ph.D.'s running around. But what [Auspex] did was just as complex as
at the time. There were a lot of good guys on the NetApp team. But Dave was the first to stand up and say, 'This can be simple.' "
\
\
| /**/ /**/ |
Hitz, 43, who is the public face of NetApp when it comes to technology, has never been known to be shy in front of a crowd. As an undergraduate at Princeton University, he collaborated with his professor, Peter Honeyman, to publish a paper on integrating e-mail name space with file systems.
Honeyman, now scientific director of the Center for Information Technology Integration at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Mich., recalls that as an undergraduate in the summer of 1986, Hitz did something that most graduate students only dream about: Present that paper at The Advanced Computing Systems Association's USENIX Technical Conference.
"Dave had to read that paper at the conference because my daughter was expected to be born a week later," Honeyman says. "Steve Bellovin, a security expert, had a daughter at the same time, so Dave also read his paper. I believe Dave put on a mask with my picture on it, or had my face projected on the screen behind him."
Honeyman, who Hitz counts as one of his mentors, says that Hitz was the most uniquely skilled student he ever had.
"I actually dragged an extra desk into my office so he could share my office," he says. "The other faculty couldn't understand why we shared. But 20 years ago, computer access was not so free. Because we were working together, he needed access. We were working as peers. It's nothing I've ever done since. It was essential that I had as much time with him as I could."
That time paid off, with nearly everyone who knows Hitz saying he is one of the most intelligent people in the high-tech industry. He also is one of the most charismatic.
"As he moved through Sun and Auspex, he collected the status of being a guru," Honeyman says.
But an approachable one.
Steve Phillips, senior pre-sales engineer at Integrated Archive Systems, Palo Alto, Calif., spent six years at NetApp, and he agrees that Hitz is both personable and very smart.
"What always struck me about Dave was, if you didn't know he was a network storage expert, you wouldn't guess it. He didn't carry himself like someone that sits in a cave writing code all day. He wasn't the typical uber-geek."
Hitz was also smart about being clear where exactly his strengths lay, Phillips says. "He went out and got great businessmen in [NetApp CEO Dan Warmenhoven] and [NetApp President Tom Mendoza] to run things," he says.
The man himself considers his greatest achievement his long-term collaboration and ongoing friendship with NetApp co-founder Lau. Today, the two live only 10 houses apart from each other. They and their wives spend a lot of time chit-chatting after work despite the lack of a common hobby. "I play golf, and Dave doesn't," Lau says.
Lau calls Hitz the smartest guy he knows. "Maybe there are other smarter people, but he's the smartest I know. The depth of knowledge he has amazes me. He spends a lot of time reading. I don't know why he keeps me around."
Meanwhile, Hitz recognizes that Lau is a very intuitive person, while his own forte is to grab the attention. "James says something once," he says. "I tend to be the loudmouth. I don't want to say I have no ideas of my own. I like to think of myself as smart."
The long relationship between the two is similar to that of comedians Harvey Korman and Tim Conway, Hitz said during his acceptance speech at the 2006 CRN Industry Hall of Fame induction ceremony last month. "They're still doing shows together even though Korman is in his 80s," he remarked. "I once asked my wife if I'll still be working with Lau when I'm in my 80s, and she said she hopes so because she can't imagine it any other way".