Last week a legend in backup, disaster recovery, and data storage passed; Jon Toigo. My first foray into storage was thanks to Jon. His 1989 book on disaster recovery launched me into the world of data protection and high availability. His book “The Holy Grail of Data Storage Management” helped me to evolve from a backup guy to a storage guy.
Jon was a funny, passionate, opinionated advocate for end users often taking vendors to task for outrageous marketing claims. If you ever wanted to get Jon fired up all you had to do was whisper “tape is dead” and let the fireworks start! I was the target of a few of those fiery opinions from time to time. I didn’t always agree with him, at least not 100%, on many topics but I always respected his perspective.
On a personal note, Jon took time with me, when I started Storage Switzerland 12 years ago, to provide me with very wise advice. He also provided excellent coaching as the business developed. I’m glad that I had the opportunity to thank him publicly prior to his passing and am happy to do so again. Jon, thank you, rest in peace. You will be missed.
George Crump is the Chief Marketing Officer at VergeIO, the leader in Ultraconverged Infrastructure. Prior to VergeIO he was Chief Product Strategist at StorONE. Before assuming roles with innovative technology vendors, George spent almost 14 years as the founder and lead analyst at Storage Switzerland. In his spare time, he continues to write blogs on Storage Switzerland to educate IT professionals on all aspects of data center storage. He is the primary contributor to Storage Switzerland and is a heavily sought-after public speaker. With over 30 years of experience designing storage solutions for data centers across the US, he has seen the birth of such technologies as RAID, NAS, SAN, Virtualization, Cloud, and Enterprise Flash. Before founding Storage Switzerland, he was CTO at one of the nation's largest storage integrators, where he was in charge of technology testing, integration, and product selection.
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RIP Jon. You will be sorely missed.
George, this was a nice memory of Jon. Thank you for sharing it. Jon and I first worked together about 11 or 12 years ago when he spoke at several events that my then-company sponsored. He was a straight shooter who was always the champion of the end-user, the “consumer” in his words. Rest, Jon. You’re missed.