Moshe Yanai, has left IBM Corporation (NYSE: IBM) after leading its storage strategy for two and a half years. Gossip about his departure had been making the rounds for months, but IBM only officially responded to them on Thursday in an article in British science and technology blog "The Register". "Mighty Moshe Yanai has left IBM for unknown reasons and regions unknown," it reported.
Yanai's career at IBM was quite brief. Before 2002, he was a senior executive at EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC), and was one of the men responsible for its rapid growth in the 1990s. He joined IBM when it acquired data storage solutions developer XIV Ltd. in early 2008 for $300 million.
Yanai, a major investor in and chairman of XIV, joined IBM as a prestigious IBM Fellow, in charge of developing a storage strategy at the computer giant.
The data storage sector is small and crowded. Everybody knows everyone else, and gossip is rife, and most of it makes its way to leading industry blogs. In July, glob Storagezilla had a cynical piece, entitled "Zilla’s Top Ten Reasons Moshe Yanai is leaving IBM". The sarcasm of the author, an EMC employee, was not surprising given the hullaballoo between IBM and EMC over the acquisition of XIV.
Nonetheless, in a conversation with "Globes", Yanai expressed surprise at IBM's official response, and declined to comment on it.
The fact that Yanai joined IBM after a long career at EMC was drama enough for the storage community for some to believe that IBM paid $300 million to get him, not to acquire XIV. Regardless, Yanai had big plans, reflected by IBM's $600 million shopping spree of Israeli storage companies in the first half of 2008: XIV, Diligent Technologies Corporation ($170 million), which Yanai co-founded, and FilesX ($80 million).
Yanai also planned to set up an IBM R&D center for storage technologies in Israel, which would employ thousands of people and have billions of dollars in exports, as he told "Globes" two years ago, when he was voted "High-Tech Man of the Year". "If this succeeds, it will happen in the next few years. Our main challenge today isn't the market or the economic crisis, nor IBM's wishes, but to get good people."
The dream, at least as far as operations in Israel is concerned, is far from materializing, and it is now doubtful if it ever will. IBM Israel's storage R&D activity has about 200 employees, not including the 40 employees of Storewiz Ltd., acquired in July, most of them at XIV's premises at Tel Aviv's Azrieli Towers.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on August 30, 2010
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