About

My name is Robin Harris. I’ve been selling and marketing data storage for over 20 years in large companies and small. I’ve introduced a couple of multi-billion dollar storage products (DLT, the first Fibre Channel array) to market, as well as dozens of smaller ones. I’m experienced in sales, product marketing, product management, business development and strategic planning.

While storage piqued my interest in 1982, I also spent 10 years marketing servers, clusters and networks. My background is well rounded, including the good fortune to work with brilliant engineers on great projects. I understand the reality of product development cycles and what that means for your marketing.

In addition to consulting and analyst work, I also write the respected industry blog StorageMojo and the popular ZDnet blog Storage Bits. Technobabble recently ranked them 10 and 11 out of over 400 IT analyst blogs – while the next highest storage blog was ranked in the 70s.

Background

25 years of business experience in high technology companies ranging from United Technologies to Digital Equipment Corporation, Sun Microsystems, Quantum and Bull
Marketing VP in a startup and work in several other startup ventures, both within larger companies and independent businesses
Sales, product marketing, product management, competitive strategy, business development and strategic planning experience in the US and Europe
Close work with engineering, field sales and marketing, finance and manufacturing, both in-house and contract
BA, Yale University; MBA, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

Work with leading edge technologies, products and, most importantly, customers:

At YottaYotta I took a cutting-edge startup from product definition to first revenue
At Sun, product managed/marketed the industry’s first full Fibre-Channel array from zero to $750 million dollar run rate in seven months with a 4 quarter unit forecast accurate to 2% – the best indicator of how well a market is understood
At DEC I launched the DLT tape family with an innovative campaign that led to DLT becoming the most successful tape product of the 1990′s

What makes me unique?
Anyone can have decades of experience if they stick around long enough. But I have more.

According to tests administered and evaluated by the 80 year old Johnson O’Connor Research Foundation I rank very high in both analytical and inductive reasoning – a combination seen in less than 1% of the population. As a result, I am adept at seeing the underlying patterns in masses of data well before most people. Simply put: exceptional insight.

When two or more patterns fit the data, the analytical side kicks in to decide what further data is needed to choose the right one. Which explains why I find leading edge technology so fascinating. My knowledge of the mechanics of IT sales, marketing and development grounds my thinking in the reality of distribution and communication of new products and technologies.

Unlike most engineers though, I am oriented to people, not things – and it is people who buy products. Thus my focus on the interaction between new products, economics, messaging and the cognitive maps of people, instead of engineering.