Brian Pawlowski CTO, DriveScale

DriveScale, Inc., in delivering Software Composable Infrastructure (SCI) for workloads, announced the appointment of veteran technology executive Brian Pawlowski as CTO.

With over 35 years experience in building technologies and leading teams in high-growth environments at top global tech companies, including Sun Microsystems, NetApp and Pure Storage, he brings expertise in scaling storage and distributed systems technologies that will help support DriveScale in its next phase of growth.

“DriveScale is pioneering a new way to deploy and manage the compute and storage across large data centers, and Brian has been a trailblazer in this arena for over 30 years,” said Gene Banman, CEO. “Brian’s strong track record for driving strategic growth and developing innovative technologies and teams will help carry us into this new era of expansion, and I’m delighted that he has joined our team.“

Pawlowski began his career as a software engineer for several organizations including Sun Microsystems, where he drove the technical analysis and discussion on alternate file systems technologies. He also led a group of senior engineers to improve NFS server performance on symmetrical multiprocessing architectures. After Sun, he was employee number 18 at NetApp, where he built the company’s first Intel PCI-based custom controller that first shipped in 1995. He held various positions at NetApp over the course of his 18 years with the company. As head of software development, he led the creation of the Network Appliance unified storage product, serving both the SAN and iSAN market. He later became CTO at NetApp, where he drove the company’s innovation and architecture for over five years.

He joined Pure Storage in 2015 as the company’s VP and chief architect, where he primarily focused on improving the user experience for the all-flash storage platform provider’s growing customer base. He later served as an advisor for Pure Storage.

He has also worked closely with the Linux community in defining and funding standard implementations of NFS, and for six years was a member of the Linux Foundation board of directors. Until recently, he was on the board of trustees for the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology, a global non-profit and digital community promoting women in computing.

“DriveScale provides storage and compute innovations that uniquely redefine scale-out architecture for today’s data center. With composable infrastructure, DriveScale enables businesses to dramatically rethink how they deploy emerging applications for data analytics and machine learning–and that is really exciting,” he said. “High growth start-up environments have always informed my approach in business and I look forward to working with DriveScale to accelerate the adoption of Software Composable Infrastructure across an even broader spectrum of applications while ensuring a delightful user experience for our expanding customer base.”

“We started DriveScale in 2013 with the goal of bringing hyperscale computing capabilities to mainstream enterprises. Our team has shaped the computer and networking industry over the past two decades, so having Brian come on board was a natural fit and a decision that my fellow co-founder, Tom Lyon, and I enthusiastically endorsed,” said Satya Nishtala, co-founder and chief architect, DriveScale. “Brian’s reputation as a seasoned architect and his tenacity for leading experienced teams gives us added confidence as we enter into our next phase of growth.”