Mr. Dave Hitz

An American engineer who co-founded Network Appliance in 1992 along with James Lau, and Michael Malcolm. The company later shortened the company name to NetApp, and became a worldwide major supplier of network based storage systems for the computer industry. He held the title of Executive Vice President and served as a programmer, marketing evangelist, technical architect, and Vice President of Engineering. He had a key role in establishing NetApp's growth culture and methods of competing with other companies providing network storage systems. He was born in Santa Monica, his family lived in L.A. until he was ten when they moved to Virginia. He attended George Washington University part-time for a year and a half, while still in high school, then went to Swarthmore College for a year. He then attended Deep Springs College in Deep Springs, California for two years. The school was located on a cattle ranch on the California/Nevada border. He learned how to rope and brand cattle. He earned a B.S. degree in Computer Science from Princeton University in 1986. He went on to work as a Senior Engineer at Auspex and as an Engineer at MIPS Computer Systems. He is co-recipient (with James Lau) of the 2007 IEEE Reynold B. Johnson Information Storage Systems Award. Using his experience on the cattle ranch, he authored a book called, ?How to Castrate a Bull: Unexpected Lessons on Risk, Growth, and Success in Business?. This was an attempt to capture the story of NetApp, and his involvement with it.