In Memoriam, Mark Carlson

In Memoriam, Mark Carlson

Mark Carlson

Mark Carlson

For information regarding upcoming remembrance services for Mark Carlson, please click here.

It is with an extremely heavy heart for SNIA colleagues and friends to learn of the sudden passing of fellow SNIA member, Mark Carlson, on May 3, 2023.

Mark has been a pillar of SNIA technical work for the last 23 years. He was first elected to serve on SNIA’s Technical Council (TC) in 2000, and served on the TC ever since. He was elected Vice-Chair of the TC in 2005, and served as either TC Chair or Co-Chair for 15 of those 23 years, guiding the execution of SNIA’s technical mission.

His extensive roles and contributions to SNIA Technical Work Groups (TWGs), Forums, Initiatives, and educational mission included Cloud Storage TWG Co-Chair, Object Drive TWG Chair, Standards Committee Co-Chair, and leader of content development for SNIA’s global Storage Developer Conferences, to name but a few. Mark was recognized many times by the SNIA Board of Directors for his valuable contributions with the SNIA Industry Impact Award.

Mark was a technology evangelist with a remarkable breadth and depth of technical knowledge. His ability to foster and lead technical work within SNIA was unique. He believed in the benefits that industry standards delivered and personally worked on or authored the SNIA Cloud Data Management Interface (CDMI™), Native NVMe-oF™ Drive Specification, Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S) and Key Value Storage API. His work on industry standards had a global impact with many standards becoming international standards through ISO/IEC.

His thought leadership was highly recognized and valued by the industry, and Mark was a frequent keynote speaker at conferences around the world, including SNIA Storage Developer Conference, which he actively helped to produce each year.

In addition to SNIA, Mark lent his considerable talents to many industry standards bodies. Anyone who has had anything to do with storage in the past twenty years owes at least some debt of gratitude to him. SNIA was particularly blessed to have Mark contribute not only to many technical standards, but also lead the Technical Council for many years. Mark’s influence will be felt for years to come.
- Dr. J Metz, Chair, SNIA Board of Directors

Mark was also an invaluable leader in DMTF for over 20 years. As a DMTF officer, Mark played a pivotal role in establishing alliances and defining DMTF’s technical standards, including the first recognized cloud standard. Due to his technical contributions and technical leadership, Mark was voted a DMTF Fellow in 2013 unanimously by the DMTF Board.

Mark was well-known and highly-respected across the industry. He held a BS in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science from Washington State University. His career spanned more than four decades with engineering positions at technology-leading companies, including Sun Microsystems, Oracle, Fujitsu, and most recently at KIOXIA, where he was a Principal Engineer, Industry Standards. Mark was an author and patent holder.

He was a man of great intellect with many varied interests. In addition to technology, he was passionate about nature and animals, making craft beer, beekeeping, and Japanese art and culture — a true Renaissance man.

Mark was a true technology icon and one of the giants at SNIA. He will be deeply missed by his SNIA family and the industry at large.