Moshe Yanai

Leader of the development of the EMC Symmetrix enterprise storage array, the flagship product of EMC Corporation in the 1990s, Yanai is considered one of the most influential contributors in the history of the data storage industry. An Israeli electrical engineer, he has also been an inventor, businessman, entrepreneur, aviator (pilot), investor, and philanthropist. He was named an IBM Fellow in 2008, the highest honor a scientist, engineer, or programmer at IBM can achieve.

He was born in Israel and earned a B.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering in 1975 from Technion, Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel. Yanai began his career building IBM-compatible mainframe data storage based on minicomputer disks for Elbit Systems, a joint project with Nixdorf Computer. Elbit Systems is an Israel-based international defense electronics company engaged in a wide range of programs throughout the world. He went on to develop high-end storage systems for Nixdorf in the United States.

He joined EMC Corporation in 1987 and managed the Symmetrix development—software and hardware—from its inception in the late 1980s until shortly before leaving EMC in 2001. In the 1990s he led the development of the EMC Symmetrix, the flagship product of EMC Corporation. His development team grew from several people, recruited among his former Israeli colleagues, to thousands, while Yanai held the position of Vice President of EMC's Symmetrix group. The Symmetrix was the main reason for the rapid growth of EMC in the 1990s, both in size and value, from a company with a fading business of minicomputer memory boards, valued in the low hundreds of millions of dollars, to a tens-of-billions-dollar company. Before leaving, he became an EMC Fellow in 2001.

He funded and led an Israeli storage startup company, XIV Ltd., where he led the development of the first truly scalable grid storage system. XIV Ltd. was bought by IBM in January 2008, with IBM paying an estimated $300 million for a company invested in with an estimated $3 million. Yanai continued leading XIV and became an IBM Fellow, and the IBM XIV Storage System became an IBM storage product. Shortly thereafter, in April 2008, IBM bought Diligent Technologies, another storage company which he had co-founded.

He left IBM in 2010 amid disagreement with IBM on the ways to advance the XIV product. Yanai was awarded the IEEE Reynold B. Johnson Information Storage Systems Award in 2010, and in June 2011 his alma mater awarded him the honor of Distinguished Fellow of the Technion. He has served as a Board of Directors member of several companies.