Moshe Yanai ( he, משה ינאי; born 1949) is an Israeli

electrical engineer Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the ...

. He is an

inventor An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition, idea or process. An invention may be an improvement upon a machine, product, or process for increasing efficiency or lowering cost. It may also be an entirely new concept. If an id ...

, businessman,

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values t ...

aviator An aircraft pilot or aviator is a person who controls the flight of an aircraft by operating its directional flight controls. Some other aircrew members, such as navigators or flight engineers, are also considered aviators, because they a ...

investor An investor is a person who allocates financial capital with the expectation of a future Return on capital, return (profit) or to gain an advantage (interest). Through this allocated capital most of the time the investor purchases some specie ...

,"EMC transfers its R&D to Diligent"
''HA'ARETZ'', November 12, 2002 (for a printer friendly version clic
here
. Retrieved 11-13-2010. and

philanthropist Philanthropy is a form of altruism that consists of "private initiatives, for the Public good (economics), public good, focusing on quality of life". Philanthropy contrasts with business initiatives, which are private initiatives for private goo ...

."New bird research fund to take flight next week"
''The Jerusalem Post'' 11/29/2010. He led the development of the

EMC Symmetrix The Symmetrix system was an EMC's enterprise storage array. It combined dozens of hard drives into a single virtual device that was then shared on a local area network. It was the flagship product of EMC in the 1990s and 2000s. History Sym ...

, the

flagship product A core product or flagship product is a company's primary promotion, service or product that can be purchased by a consumer. Core products may be integrated into end products, either by the company producing the core product or by other companies ...

EMC Corporation Dell EMC (EMC Corporation until 2016) is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Hopkinton, Massachusetts and Round Rock, Texas, United States. Dell EMC sells data storage, information security, virtualization, analytics, cloud c ...

in the 1990s, which prevented, to some extent, financial chaos in

New York Stock Exchange The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed ...

and certain

bank A bank is a financial institution that accepts deposits from the public and creates a demand deposit while simultaneously making loans. Lending activities can be directly performed by the bank or indirectly through capital markets. Becau ...

s after the

September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commerc ...

, as further detailed below.

Biography

Moshe Yanai was born in 1949 in

Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...

, and earned a

B.Sc. A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University of ...

in electrical engineering in 1975 from Technion - Israel Institute of Technology.

Elbit-Nixdorf project

Yanai began his career building IBM-compatible mainframe

data storage Data storage is the recording (storing) of information (data) in a storage medium. Handwriting, phonographic recording, magnetic tape, and optical discs are all examples of storage media. Biological molecules such as RNA and DNA are cons ...

based on

minicomputer A minicomputer, or colloquially mini, is a class of smaller general purpose computers that developed in the mid-1960s and sold at a much lower price than mainframe and mid-size computers from IBM and its direct competitors. In a 1970 survey, ...

disks for

Elbit Systems Elbit Systems Ltd. is an Israel-based international defense electronics company engaged in a wide range of programs throughout the world. The company, which includes Elbit Systems and its subsidiaries, operates in the areas of aerospace, land ...

(a joint project with

Nixdorf Computer Nixdorf Computer AG was a West German computer company founded by Heinz Nixdorf in 1952. Headquartered in Paderborn, Germany, it became the fourth largest computer company in Europe, and a worldwide specialist in banking and point-of-sale syste ...

). He went on to develop high-end storage systems for Nixdorf in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

EMC Corporation

Yanai joined

in 1987, and managed the

Symmetrix The Symmetrix system was an EMC's enterprise storage array. It combined dozens of hard drives into a single virtual device that was then shared on a local area network. It was the flagship product of EMC in the 1990s and 2000s. History Sym ...

development,

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. ...

and

hardware Hardware may refer to: Technology Computing and electronics * Electronic hardware, interconnected electronic components which perform analog or logic operations ** Digital electronics, electronics that operate on digital signals *** Computer hard ...

, from its inception in the late 1980sAxxana board of directors
See Moshe Yanai. Retrieved 2-26-2011. until shortly before leaving EMC in 2001.EMC Company Web site, November 29, 2001

See paragraph about Moshe Yanai. Retrieved 10-24-2010. His development team grew from several people, recruited among his former Israeli colleagues, to thousands, while he was vice president. As a result, EMC grew in the 1990s, both in size and value, from a company with a fading business of (

)

computer memory In computing, memory is a device or system that is used to store information for immediate use in a computer or related computer hardware and digital electronic devices. The term ''memory'' is often synonymous with the term '' primary storage ...

boards Board or Boards may refer to: Flat surface * Lumber, or other rigid material, milled or sawn flat ** Plank (wood) ** Cutting board ** Sounding board, of a musical instrument * Cardboard (paper product) * Paperboard * Fiberboard ** Hardboard, ...

, valued in several millions of

dollars Dollar is the name of more than 20 Currency, currencies. They include the Australian dollar, Brunei dollar, Canadian dollar, Hong Kong dollar, Jamaican dollar, Liberian dollar, Namibian dollar, New Taiwan dollar, New Zealand dollar, Singapore d ...

, to a hundreds-of-billions company. Before leaving Yanai became an EMC Fellow. Yanai led the development of the

, the

in the 1990s, which was a first scalable network storage system in the market.

hardware and its

SRDF The Symmetrix system was an EMC's enterprise storage array. It combined dozens of hard drives into a single virtual device that was then shared on a local area network. It was the flagship product of EMC in the 1990s and 2000s. History Sym ...

(Symmetrix remote data facility) software placed

as "the most dominnat force in all of the storage industry". The

network storage scalability made it the father of current

cloud storage Cloud storage is a model of computer data storage in which the digital data is stored in logical pools, said to be on "the cloud". The physical storage spans multiple servers (sometimes in multiple locations), and the physical environment is ty ...

, essential in mamy avenues of

online In computer technology and telecommunications, online indicates a state of connectivity and offline indicates a disconnected state. In modern terminology, this usually refers to an Internet connection, but (especially when expressed "on line" o ...

and big data technologies. The role of Yanai's contribution was described by 2001 ESG report by : ”the person most responsible for architecting the single most successful product in subsystem history (Symmetrix) has been Moshe Yanai". Enterprises such as banks who depend on performance and big data found

to be essential for their work. Later on,

remote replication feature prevented financial chaos in

and certain

s after the

, as described by Barron's who called the SRDF “the true hero of 9/11”. This appreciation of Symmetrix and SDRF is based on the fact that "EMC has 25 customers in the World Trade Center... with another dozen in the immediate vicinity". The New York Stock Exchange and several important banks were among these 25 customers.

Diligent Technologies and XIV

Yanai co-founded Diligent Technologies in Israel as an R&D center for EMC. Yanai also funded and led an

i storage

startup company A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship refers to all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses that never intend ...

, XIV, which was bought by IBM in January 2008. IBM paid an estimated $300 million for a company invested in with an estimated $3 million."Why did IBM buy XIV? IBM's XIV Purchase background"
''TecWorld'', January 4, 2008. Retrieved 11-11-2010. Shortly later, in April 2008, IBM also bought Diligent Technologies.IBM Company Web site: Press release 18 April 200
IBM Acquires Storage Company Diligent Technologies
Retrieved 3-1-2011. Yanai continued leading XIV and became an

IBM Fellow An IBM Fellow is an appointed position at IBM made by IBM's CEO. Typically only four to nine (eleven in 2014) IBM Fellows are appointed each year, in May or June. Fellow is the highest honor a scientist, engineer, or programmer at IBM can achie ...

,IBM Company Web site
IBM Fellow Moshe Yanai
Retrieved 11-11-2010. while IBM XIV Storage System became an IBM storage product.IBM Company Web site
IBM XIV Storage System
Retrieved 3-1-2011. Yanai left IBM in 2010.
''Calcalist'', September 7, 2010 (In Hebrew; a printer friendly versio

for an English version use, e.g., Google Web-page translation). Retrieved 11-11-2010.

INFINDAT

In 2011, Yanai founded Infinidat, a

computer data storage Computer data storage is a technology consisting of computer components and recording media that are used to retain digital data. It is a core function and fundamental component of computers. The central processing unit (CPU) of a comput ...

company. In 2011, Infinidat announced Moshe became its CEO. In April 2015, Infinidat announced a $150 million investment led by

TPG Capital TPG Inc., previously known as Texas Pacific Group and TPG Capital, is an American investment company based in Fort Worth, Texas. The private equity firm is focused on leveraged buyouts and growth capital. TPG manages investment funds in growth ...

. This investment placed it among the most valuable privately held companies.Wall Street Journal, April 30, 2015
"Data Storage Startup Infinidat Raises $150 Million at $1.2 Billion Valuation"
Retrieved 04-30-2015. He also has been a board of directors member of several companies.

Patents

Yanai is an inventor or co-inventor of about 40 US patents in the field of electronic data storage. For example only, two patents granted to EMC and invented by Yanai ''etal'' are: # US 5,390,313 granted February 14, 1995, titled "Data storage with data mirroring and reduced access time data retrieval". # US 5,544,347 granted August 6, 1996, titled " Data storage controlled remote data mirroring with respectively maintained data indices".

Awards and recognition

* EMC Fellow – 2001 *

– 2008. * IEEE Reynold B. Johnson Information Storage Systems Award – 2010, awarded "for sustained innovation and legendary leadership in development of clustered global cache storage architectures and business continuity solutions that have defined the enterprise storage industry". * Distinguished Fellow of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology – 2011. The Technion is Yanai's Alma mater. *

Honorary Doctorate An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or '' ad ho ...

, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology – 2012

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Yanai, Moshe Living people 1948 births Technion – Israel Institute of Technology alumni IBM Fellows Israeli businesspeople Israeli inventors