EMC Names Technical Advisory Board

EMC announced on Monday the formation of a Technical Advisory Board to provide independent review of EMC's future technologies and strategy. Their findings and recommendations will be provided directly to the company's senior leadership team.

The Technical Advisory Board is to be chaired by Pat Gelsinger, president and COO, Information Infrastructure Products, EMC. "To execute on EMC's vision of being the leader in the journey to the private cloud, we need to harness the best thinking and thinkers in the industry," said Gelsinger in a statement. "The formation of the Technical Advisory Board is a major milestone in this strategy, giving EMC an independent resource to ensure we fully address the dramatic challenges customers face as they move to the private cloud."

In addition to Gelsinger and Nick, EMC will also be represented on the Technical Advisory Board by Randolph Cowen, a former CIO of Goldman Sachs who has been on the EMC board of directors since January 2009.

Board members from partner companies include: Steve Herrod, CTO and SVP of R&D, VMware; Rod Johnson, general manager, SpringSource and SVP of middleware at VMware; Steve Pawlowski, senior fellow, Intel Architecture Group and general manager, central architecture and planning, Intel Corporation.

The inclusion of non-EMC experts on the board will provide the company with external perspectives, advice on industry trends, and opinions on advanced development opportunities and initiatives. Board members were selected for their expertise in server, networking, storage, virtualization, cloud computing, data structures, security, application middleware, and technical computing.

"EMC is putting together an unprecedented panel of industry luminaries from academia and the business world to tackle customer challenges across a broad range of issues," said Jeffrey M. Nick, Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President, EMC, in a statement. "In addition to the journey to the private cloud, the Technical Advisory Board will focus on key trends shaping the IT industry such as the convergence of server, network and storage technology platforms; data analytics at cloud-scale; and IT governance, risk and compliance."

Appointments to the board are for two-year terms. The inaugural meeting will take place on Wednesday at EMC World in Boston.