Stephen R. Guendert Sr., Ph., D
Principal Global Solutions Architect
Brocade Communications Systems


Biographical Sketch:
Steve has 25 years of management and hands on experience in a wide variety of high technology environments including nuclear engineering, electronic warfare systems, and information technology. Prior to his civilian career in information technology, Steve was an active duty United States Navy Officer. He is a combat decorated EA-6B Prowler Naval Flight Officer with combat missions flown over Iraq and Bosnia/Serbia. Steve’s highest military decoration is the U.S. Air Medal, which he was awarded by the President of the United States. He has over 300 aircraft carrier arrested landings and 1200 flight hours. Steve’s focus in his IT career has been on mainframe and mainframe storage. Steve has experience as a customer, IBM, CNT, McDATA and is currently at Brocade. Steve led CNT and McDATA’s Mainframe Professional Services practice. At Brocade Steve is a Global Solutions Architect in the Technical Marketing Department. Steve’s current role is to serve as Brocade’s customer facing technical thought leader in the mainframe segment of Brocade’s business. Steve is an industry recognized worldwide expert on ESCON, FICON, and mainframe I/O. His Ph.D dissertation topic was titled “A Comprehensive Justification For Migrating From ESCON to FICON”. He is a regular speaker at industry/vendor conferences, Computer Measurement Group (CMG) events, and SHARE. He is also a published author of over 30 papers on Mainframe I/O and FICON. Steve’s papers have appeared in zJournal, CMG Proceedings, NASPA Technical Support, Disaster Recovery Journal, and CMG Journal. Steve is on the zJournal Editorial Review Board, is the current editor of the CMG Journal, and has a mainframe storage column in zJournal. Steve is active in several industry organizations: • SHARE: o Board of Directors member 2007-2008 o Enterprise Data Center Program Manager (current) • Computer Measurement Group (CMG) o 2007 nominee for Board of Directors o 2007-2008 Storage Subject Area Chairman o Ohio Valley Regional CMG Chairman o Editorial Review Board o CMG Journal Editor Steve is a member of IEEE, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and ACM Sigmetrics. Steve is also part of the IEEE Standards Association. Steve has his Bachelor’s in Economics from Northwestern University. He has an MBA from Auburn University. He also has a M.S. in Management Information Systems from Auburn University. His Master’s thesis topic was on Business Justifications for Storage Networks. Steve completed the requirements for his PhD in Management Information Systems in December 2007.