Dr. Chong Sup Park
Board Advisor
How did you learn about Nyriad?
I’ve known John Scaramuzzo [Chief Operating Officer of Nyriad] for many years. He was the General Manager of Maxtor when I was CEO. I have been very excited about the explosion of data storage. If you think about it, it wasn’t long ago that shipping a petabyte of data to a customer was a big thing. Now multi-petabyte deployments are common. Storage has evolved to try and handle it by introducing increasing area density and coming up with new technologies such as flash that are more robust and reliable than previous media. But there are limitations in how today’s solutions are deployed, which is primarily RAID—performance issues, high failure rates, and long rebuild times. I’ve known we need something new. So, when John spoke to me about Nyriad and what the company is doing, I was interested.
What attracted you to become a Board Advisor to Nyriad?
Young startups often fail because they are too engineering driven and become overly obsessed with technology. They can also be overconfident. Investors contribute to that feeling with high valuations and these companies take the money for granted, spending it on things they don’t really need. If you look at many storage companies, they received tons of money and now have lots of losses. Nyriad is at an early stage, but Herb [Hunt, Chief Executive Officer of Nyriad] has been able to recruit very senior business people to the company who know what it takes to be successful. I believe the Nyriad team has the mindset and experience to not repeat the typical mistakes of startups.
What do you think differentiates Nyriad from other storage companies?
Most new storage companies are focused on tackling just one of the issues associated with storage. This has led to an industry that is focused on incremental improvements and very fragmented. Not to dismiss what individual companies have been able to do, but to solve today’s storage problems, you need the ability to take a step back and see the whole picture. Nyriad is in a unique position to look holistically at a single platform solution based on a new patented architecture that can handle all three storage types, block, file or object, and any storage media. This will enhance performance, reduce complexity, and lengthen product life cycles in a cost-effective way.
How do you view your role as a Board Advisor to Nyriad?
I’ve been the CEO of both large, public storage and semiconductor companies and startups. I’ve served on many Boards as a director and chaired strategy, compensation, and audit committees. I’ve also been an advisor to Boards. If you look at some of the missteps companies have made, you have to wonder, did any Board member challenge management on some of these decisions? Even Boards can become blinded by passion. What I bring to Nyriad are broad insights and based on my experience, the ability to offer a balanced perspective.
How do you view Nyriad’s prospects?
Nyriad is bringing a new architecture to the storage industry that can deliver great value to customers. The leadership team knows storage technology and the storage business. The company is currently working with innovative customers to prove the technology. As long as Nyriad executes, adoption will happen.
