CTO & Chief Architect for Flash Systems, IBMAndy Walls has worked for IBM his entire 33 year career. He was appointed a Distinguished Engineer in 2006 and has been located in San Jose, California, since 1987. In April of 2014, Andy was appointed an IBM Fellow, IBM’s most prestigious technical honor. Andy has worked in storage for most of his career since and is an industry recognized expert in storage systems architecture and NAND flash storage for the enterprise. He is currently the CTO and Chief Architect for IBM FlashSystem and is leading the work on developing the next generation of high performance storage systems. He is known as an innovator and has over 70 patents to his name. He graduated from UC Santa Barbara with a BSEE in 1981.