Vincent (Yu-Cheng) Hsu

An IBM Fellow and IBM's Chief Technology Officer for Disk Storage Systems, his responsibilities included future storage technology, system architecture and design, and solution integration. Prior to this position, he served as Chief Engineer for IBM Enterprise Storage System. Hsu devoted his over 21-year career at IBM to Enterprise Storage System development.

He grew up in Taiwan, 125 miles off mainland China, and inherited his knack for engineering from his father. After earning a degree in Electrical Engineering at the University of Taiwan, he attended graduate school at the University of Arizona, where he studied Computer Engineering and earned his Master's degree in Computer and Electrical Engineering. He joined the IBM Storage Development team in Tucson, Arizona in 1991.

In 2001, he earned his stripes as a Senior Technical Staff Member after leading the team that delivered FICON support two years early, connecting System z with IBM's storage systems—an advance that gave IBM a stranglehold on mainframe-attached storage. Hsu followed that up by leading the development of the DS8000, which launched in 2005 and remained a key part of IBM's storage portfolio. In 2009, he was named the CTO for IBM Disk Storage, leading IBM's storage technology council to oversee storage technology for all IBM disk storage products.

He worked with the IBM research team to develop Easy Tier storage technology, which advanced the IBM Smarter Storage concept to enable direct-attached, server-based SSDs. The team began working on the technology in late 2008, and Easy Tier became available to clients in 2010. Hsu stated, "Currently, 40 percent of enterprise storage ships with Easy Tier technology." This technology transformed storage from a passive device to a smart system able to learn, adapt, and communicate.

He also worked with research and software teams on Content-Aware Storage, which could interpret the content of data and its characteristics. He was quoted as saying, "It is the era of 'smart storage'." Hsu was additionally developing the fourth generation of Easy Tier. Fluent in Mandarin, he frequently flew to China to meet with IBM's major storage clients there, as well as with young technical talent working at labs in Beijing, Shanghai, and Taipei.

He mentored more than 30 next-generation IBMers worldwide and often brought young technologists along to client meetings. An IBM Master Inventor, in 2012 he was named an IBM Fellow, the highest honor a scientist, engineer, or programmer at IBM can achieve. In 2005, Hsu was named a Distinguished Engineer (executive level engineer) and Chief Engineer for IBM DS8000 product.