Top Ten Storage Networking Stars: Page 9 of 19

Last November, EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC) CEO Joe Tucci put Donatelli – at 37, one of the younger members on our Top Ten – in charge of Hopkinton's crown jewels. As EVP of storage platforms operations, Donatelli oversees every aspect of the development and sales strategy behind EMC's Symmetrix, Clariion, and Celerra storage hardware systems.

One former EMC employee says she was at first befuddled when Tucci handed Donatelli the reins of the unified hardware platforms group. He has an MBA, not a computer science degree, which went against the grain of EMC's culture. "Dave was the M&A guy for a long time and is definitely more of a business type than a technology type," she says. "But it seems like he's making the right moves for the hardware group."

Others think Donatelli's skills are especially well suited for this point in EMC's lifecycle. "Seems to me the time is right to worry about taking costs out of the platform at all levels, and he's got to be considered a good dude to manage that," says Steve Duplessie, founder of Enterprise Storage Group Inc. and an ex-EMC employee (who's No. 6 on our list, by the way).

In less than a year Donatelli has made changes that look commonsensical but required challenging some entrenched modes of behavior at EMC. Previously, the Symmetrix and Clariion groups were run as separate fiefdoms. Donatelli got rid of that balkanization, combining the R&D groups for both hardware platforms. That means EMC's storage systems will benefit from common HBAs, device drivers, and management tools. "It sounds easy," Donatelli says, "but it took a fair amount of focus and effort to make sure we could go to customers with an integrated capability."

Lest you think he's merely a bean counter, Donatelli does exhibit a sharp sense of where storage hardware is headed. Won't the actual storage devices become less intelligent – and, thus, of lower value – once more intelligence migrates to the network?