Howard O Young

Inventor, Entrepreneur & Technology Executive

📍 Dothan, Alabama • Los Angeles native

Founder, Howard Young Tech 6 US Patents 40+ Years in Systems & Storage Ex-Director of Solutions Architecture, Zadara AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner

About

Howard O Young is an American inventor, entrepreneur, and technology executive based in Dothan, Alabama. He is the Founder and Managing Director of Howard Young Tech, established in 2023. With over 40 years of experience spanning embedded systems, storage solutions, cloud infrastructure, and enterprise technology, Young has held senior engineering and executive roles across leading aerospace and enterprise storage organizations.

Young earned a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and Computer Science from California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, California, establishing the mathematical and engineering foundation for a lifelong career in compiler tooling, low-level firmware, Fibre Channel architectures, and cloud hydrations.

Of American Indian (Potawatomi tribe) and Norwegian descent, Young grew up working in his family's store, The Buffalo Robe, in Reseda, California. His grandfather was an inventor and geologist who operated oil wells in Baldwin Hills during the 1920s, including the derrick Phil Young, Jr., establishing a multigenerational heritage of engineering and enterprise.

Core Technical Expertise

  • Storage Area Networks (SAN) & Virtualization
  • Fibre Channel Systems & Host Bus Adapters
  • Cloud Infrastructure & Multi-Cloud Hydration
  • Distributed Systems Architecture
  • Embedded Firmware & Micro-kernel Design
  • Compiler Design (Ada 83, Modula-2)
  • Linux Kernel Optimization & I/O Subsystems
  • Knowledge Graphs & Semantic Web Architecture

Career Milestones

Founder & Managing Director • Howard Young Tech

2023 – Present | Dothan, Alabama

Enterprise technology consulting specializing in storage engineering, cloud architecture, and embedded systems development.

Director of Solutions Architecture • Zadara

2014 – 2024 | Irvine, California

Architected enterprise-grade Virtual Private Storage Array (VPSA) deployments, containerized storage frameworks, and multi-cloud hydration strategies across petabyte-scale production environments.

Principal Software Engineer • LSI Logic / QLogic

2005 – 2010

Engineered enterprise Fibre Channel host bus adapters and SAN virtualization products deployed in global enterprise datacenters.

Co-Founder & CEO • ClknGo Software Corporation

2002 – 2017 | Thousand Oaks, California

Managed technology consulting engagements with QLogic, ITT/Allen Osborne Associates, and enterprise technology firms.

Senior Engineer • Troika Networks

2000 – 2005

Developed enterprise SAN virtualization and data protection platforms (backed by Intel Capital and Anthem Venture Partners).

Embedded Systems Engineer • Allen Osborne Associates (AOA)

1998 – 2000

Developed embedded micro-kernels for PowerPC 603 GPS receivers.

Firmware Engineer • Litton Guidance & Control Systems

1984 – 1998 | Woodland Hills, California

Developed low-level firmware, micro-kernels, and bootstrap loaders in JOVIAL and assembly for aerospace Inertial Navigation Systems; built Fortran-based Ada compiler on VAX 11/780.

US Patents in Storage & Fibre Channel

Howard Young is the inventor or co-inventor of six US Patents in storage virtualization, dynamic caching, and Fibre Channel architectures:

US 8,504,766 Cut-through cache management for a mirrored virtual volume

Issued 2013

Dynamic cut-through cache synchronization for mirrored virtual volumes in virtualized storage systems.

US 8,489,940 Managing asynchronous dependent I/O for a virtual Fibre Channel target

Issued 2013 | Co-inventor: Srinivasa Rao

Dependency-aware asynchronous I/O scheduling for virtual Fibre Channel target architectures.

US 8,261,003 Managing expanded capacity of virtual volumes in a storage system

Issued 2012 | Co-inventors: Srinivasa Rao, Kartik Agarwal, Gordon Larimer

Online capacity expansion and metadata volume management in enterprise storage arrays.

US 8,255,634 Look-ahead virtual volume meta-data processing in a storage controller

Issued 2012

Predictive metadata caching and pre-fetching mechanisms in split-path storage controllers.

US 8,176,218 Real-time routing of received commands in a split-path architecture

Issued 2012 | Co-inventors: Dante Cinco, Thomas Anderson

Low-latency command routing across split control/data planes in storage controllers.

US 8,155,518 Dynamic load balancing of Fibre Channel traffic

Issued 2012

Adaptive multi-port traffic distribution and real-time load balancing for Fibre Channel HBAs.

Publications & Public Speaking

"Best practices for migrating data to the cloud"

InfoWorld (July 2017)

Quantitative analysis and enterprise frameworks for petabyte-scale data migration, physical NAS appliance transfer (AWS Snowball), and format preservation.

"Simplifying Complex Cloud Hydrations"

Data Center Knowledge

Foundational architecture for enterprise cloud hydrations, sequential mirroring for zero-downtime migrations, and multi-cloud asynchronous replication.

Zadara Summit Presentations

2016 Industry Conference

Delivered technical sessions on VPSA Performance Tuning, Enterprise Storage Selection Criteria, and Latency-Free Docker Container Storage.

Tech Tip Tuesdays Video Series

Zadara YouTube Channel (38+ Episodes)

Hosted technical series covering cloud storage tuning, snapshot management, Docker persistence, and Google Cloud platform integrations.

Community Leadership & Performing Arts

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