Biographical Sketch: Howard L. Johnson Technology Architect (FICON) Howard Johnson began his career in 1984 developing configuration applications for 3270 Cluster Controllers for McDATA Corporation in Boulder, Colorado. In 1993, in partnership with IBM, Johnson was part of the team that created the ESCON Director Models 3/4/5 as well as the FICON to ESCON Bridge. As technical leader, he directed the efforts of the technical teams that expanded IBM’s original storage-area networks (SAN) from ESCON to FICON. Today, Howard Johnson is a member of Brocade’s Network Systems Architecture group reporting to the Chief Architect. He has more than 26 years of professional experience in high-end processing environments. He is responsible for the technical strategy relating to Brocade’s System z Infrastructure offerings.