About
Randy Kerns is an Analyst for Gigaom Research and the Senior Strategist at Evaluator Group, bringing expertise that ranges from virtualization everywhere to very long term archive. He draws from over 35 years in the computer industry helping storage companies design and develop storage system products for their markets as well as advising technical professionals on how to build the best storage infrastructures to streamline their business processes. Prior to joining Evaluator Group, Randy served as CTO for ProStor where he brought products to market addressing long term archive for Information Technology and the Healthcare and Media / Entertainment markets. He was vice president of storage strategy and planning at Sun Microsystems; led engineering organization in designing disk and tape systems for mainframe attachment at IBM and StorageTek; he designed disk systems for attachment to open systems and proprietary computer platforms at Fujitsu and Tandem Computers; and he developed tape and disk systems for two VC-backed companies.
Randy Kerns earned a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Missouri at Rolla and a master’s degree in engineering computer science from the University of Colorado. An educator and presenter, Randy Kerns has written numerous industry articles and papers and is the author of Planning a Storage Strategy, a book that offers step-by-step guidance on how to build an information storage strategy as part of a larger business process and most recently is the author of Information Archiving – Economics and Compliance, the first book of its kind to explore in depth the archiving of digital information. He also contributes regularly to the TechTarget blog,Storage Soup and is a member of TechTarget’s Editorial Speaker Bureau. Randy Kerns teaches classes on storage technology regularly in the United States and Europe. Currently he is the presiding Chairman of the Board for the Triangle Education Foundation.