Mark A. Carlson (born 1955) was a
software engineer
Software engineering is a branch of both computer science and engineering focused on designing, developing, testing, and maintaining software applications. It involves applying engineering principles and computer programming expertise to develop ...
known in the
systems management industry for his work in management standards and technology. Mark was the first employee of a small startup in
Boulder, Colorado
Boulder is a List of municipalities in Colorado#Home rule municipality, home rule city in Boulder County, Colorado, United States, and its county seat. With a population of 108,250 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the most ...
called Redcape Policy Software.
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010 which developed and sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services. Sun contributed sig ...
acquired the company and its technology in 1998 and subsequently promoted it as
Jiro, a common management framework based on
Java
Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...
and
Jini.
Carlson was best known for his work on the development of a storage management standard called
SMI-S for the
SNIA, serving as the chair of the group overseeing the specification for several years. The specification is now an ANSI and
ISO
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ; ; ) is an independent, non-governmental, international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries.
Me ...
standard.
In addition to SMI-S, Mark also led the development of a reference implementation of the
XAM standard, a next generation storage interface with support for
metadata
Metadata (or metainformation) is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data itself, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including:
* Descriptive ...
,
query and compliance based
data retention of fixed content. Based on this work, he authored the Storage Industry Resource Domain Model, a model for
Computer data storage
Computer data storage or digital data storage is a technology consisting of computer components and Data storage, recording media that are used to retain digital data. It is a core function and fundamental component of computers.
The cent ...
interfaces showing the role of
system metadata for future integrated
Data Services orchestrated by policy.
Carlson has led various efforts around Policy Based Management, including co-authoring RFC 3198 and chairing of the
DMTF and SNIA policy working groups. He was a core contributor on the Apache incubator project called Imperius, which is an implementation of the standard CIM-SPL policy language.
Mark's most recent efforts were to lead the development of a standard
cloud storage interface leveraging the preceding storage and data management technologies. As chair of the SNIA Cloud Storage Technical Work Group, he was driving the development of the Cloud Data Management Interface (CDMI) and a reference implementation of the interface.
He served on the SNIA Technical Council.
He was also appointed as a DMTF Fellow for the Distributed Management Task Force (
DMTF).
Death
Mark passed away unexpectedly May 3, 2023. More information is available on hi
SNIA Memorial webpageand hi
family memorial webpage
References
External links
SNIA Technical CouncilCloud Storage Standards
{{DEFAULTSORT:Carlson, Mark
Living people
Computer designers
1955 births