Event: Talks on Challenges in Storage Technology by CTO & VP of Seagate – 21 July

We have two visitors in town – Dr. Mark Re, CTO of Seagate Technology and Pravin Desale, VP of Product Development at Seagate – and we are taking this opportunity of arranging an event where PuneTech readers get to hear them talk about the latest challenges in the area of storage technology.

The event will be on Tuesday, 21 July, at Sumant Moolgaokar Auditorium, MCCIA, ICC Trade Tower, SB Road, and the agenda is:

  • 5:30pm-6:00pm: Networking: Snacks and tea will be served
  • 6:00pm-6:05pm: Introduction of the Speakers
  • 6:05pm-6:30pm: Pravin Desale’s talk “Managing Storage Solutions in the Era of Data Explosion”
  • 6:30pm-7:15pm: Mark Re’s talk “Challenges in Hard Disk Design and Manufacturing and Case for a Hybrid Drive”.
  • 7:15pm-7:30pm: Q&A

Talk #1: Managing Storage Solutions in the Era of Data Explosion – Pravin Desale

Data has evolved from static information stored and forgotten, to a living entity that drives every interaction of every day. We are creating solutions to fit the increasing needs and demands of our data-driven society. The demand is literally exploding and we need a vast range of storage solution to address needs of this data explosion.

In this talk, we will illustrate how different technologies from accelerators to flash solutions to HDDs to archival HDDs address needs of different markets, for variety of platforms in multitude of use cases.

About the Speaker – Pravin Desale

Pravin Desale is Vice President of Product Development at Seagate Technology. He is responsible for all ASSPs, ASICs, FPGAs and structured ASICs for Seagate’s Hard drives, Hybrid Drives, Flash Acceleration Cards and Solid State Drives. Pravin Desale is also responsible for guiding India investments of Seagate and management structure for India entity for the company. Pravin Desale and his management team joined Seagate as a result of acquisition of Flash Business by Seagate from LSI Corporation/Avago in 2014.

Prior to joining Seagate, Pravin held various roles at LSI Corporation/Avago ranging from VP of RAID storage product development to General Manager of LSI’s India operations. Pravin has been Founder/Engineering leader at a number of smaller companies that he helped acquire/integrate within fortune 500 companies such as LSI corporation, National Semiconductor in India and the US. Pravin continues to be active within venture community as well as has held fiduciary roles at emerging technology start up entities over past few years.

Pravin has 23+ years of professional experience ranging from research and development of storage, networking and multimedia/communication products to managing profit loss (P&Ls), operational and engineering competencies for global development centers.

Talk #2: Challenges in Hard Disk Design and Manufacturing and Case for a Hybrid Drive – Mark Re

Dr. Re’s talk will focus on the hard disk drive challenges; clarify some misconceptions and share industry and technology roadmaps. These roadmaps address the capacity and performance challenges for designing and manufacturing storage products. He will highlight key features in each of these technologies, including sharing a Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) video demonstration. He will make the case for the solid-state hybrid drives, which combine the speed of flash technology with the capacity and cost benefits of hard drives. He will also introduce enhanced cache drives, briefly comparing the architectural data flows between hybrid drives and enhanced cache drives- highlighting innovation behind increased performance.

About the Speaker – Mark Re

Mark Re is Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President of Research and Development at Seagate Technology. He is responsible for all hard disk drive product and component research and development. Prior to his appointment as CTO on July 1, 2013, Re held many different roles within Seagate, including: SVP of R&D Media, Media Operations, and Heads R&D.

Prior to joining Seagate in 2003, Re served as SVP of Research and Development at Read-Rite in Fremont, California. Earlier career highlights include management positions at IBM in San Jose, California, and Yorktown Heights, New York, where Re’s primary focus was magnetic recording heads. During his tenure there, Re was named an IBM Distinguished Engineer in 1997.

Re holds a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and a bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University.

About Seagate Technology

Seagate started off as a hard disk manufacturer – being the first company to develop the 5.25″ HDD – and quickly becoming one of the world’s leading brands of HDDs, but over the years it has extended its reach into other aspects of enterprise storage, and is now a leader in data storage solutions. The company provides hard disk drives, solid state drives, and solid state hybrid drives that are designed for enterprise servers and storage systems in mission critical and nearline applications; for client compute applications comprising desktop and mobile computing; and for client non-compute applications, such as digital video recorders, personal data backup systems, portable external storage systems, and digital media systems.

Seagate also offers data storage services, including online backup, data protection, and recovery solutions for small and medium-sized businesses. In addition, the company ships external backup storage solutions under its Backup Plus and Expansion product lines, as well as under the Samsung and LaCie brand names; Wireless Plus wireless drives; and network attached storage solutions under its Central, NAS, NAS Pro, and Rackmount NAS product lines. It sells its products primarily to OEMs, distributors, and retailers.

On March 12, 2013, Seagate announced that it was the first disk manufacturer to have cumulatively shipped two billion HDDs.

Fees and Registration

This event is free and open for anybody to attend. Please register here: http://punetech.eventbrite.com/?aff=punetech

The event is from 5:30pm to 7:30pm, on Tuesday, 21 July, at Sumant Moolgaokar Auditorium, MCCIA, ICC Trade Tower, SB Road.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *