The following conversation is the second installment of a CTO roundtable featuring seven world-class experts on storage technologies. This series of CTO forums focuses on the near-term challenges and opportunities facing the commercial computing community. Overseen by the ACM Professions Board, the goal of the series is to provide IT managers with access to expert advice to help inform their decisions when investing in new architectures and technologies.

Once again we’d like to thank Ellie Young, executive director of Usenix, who graciously invited us to hold our panel during the Usenix Conference on File and Storage Technologies (FAST ’08) in San Jose, California, Feb. 27, 2008. Young and her staff were extremely helpful in supporting us during the conference, and all of us at ACM greatly appreciate their efforts. —Stephen Bourne

Leaders in the storage industry ponder

upcoming technologies and trends.

MODERATOR

MACHE CREEGER Principal, Emergent Technology Associates PARTICIPANTS STEVE KLEIMAN Senior vice president and chief scientist, Network Appliances ERIC BREWER Professor, Computer Science Division, University of California, Berkeley; Inktomi co-founder (acquired by Yahoo) ERIK RIEDEL Head, Interfaces and Architecture Department, Seagate Research, Seagate Technology MARGO SELTZER Herchel Smith Professor of Computer Science, professor in the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University; Sleepycat Software founder (acquired by Oracle Corporation); architect at Oracle Corporation GREG GANGER Professor of electrical and computer engineering, School of Computer Science; director, Parallel Data Lab, Carnegie Mellon University MARY BAKER Research scientist, HP Labs, Hewlett-Packard KIRK McKUSICK Past president, Usenix Association; BSD and FreeBSD architect

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