Serial Storage Architecture (SSA), and storage area networks (SANs). Joe is a Microsoft Certified Professional and a Certified Level 2 Fibre Channel Practitioner (awarded by the Storage Networking Industry Association). 

Tomoaki Ogino  is a Level 1 certified IT specialist at IBM Japan. He has 30 years of experience in IBM Z and worked at IBM for 28 years in the field directly with customers. He is a Subject Matter Expert in the areas of DFSMS and high-end tape products and supporting post-sales and pre-sales for 2 years. 

Sosuke Matsui is a software development engineer in Tokyo, Japan. He joined IBM Japan in 2009, and worked on the development and testing of asynchronous replication of IBM Scale Out Network Attached Storage for 5 years. Currently, he is responsible for the development and testing of TS7700 hierarchical storage management (HSM) component. He is a member of the Association for Computing and Machinery (ACM) and Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ). 

Alberto Barajas Ortiz graduated from the Technological Institute of Superior Studies of Monterrey (MEXICO) in 2016 with a Master’s degree in Administration of Information Technology, and he is a PMI-certified Project Management Professional. He has worked for IBM since 2001. During the last 13 years, he has been collaborating with the TS7700 Development effort in the Product Test area (mainly focused in Functional Verification aspects), where he has served as a Team Lead for the last 8 years. 

Aderson Pacini  works in the Tape Support Group in the IBM Brazil Hardware Resolution Center. He is responsible for providing second-level support for tape products in Brazil. Aderson has extensive experience servicing a broad range of IBM products. He has installed, implemented, and supported all of the IBM Tape Virtualization Servers, from the IBM VTS B16 to the IBM TS7700 Virtualization Engine. Aderson joined IBM in 1976 as a Service Representative, and his entire career has been in IBM Services™. 

Michael Scott  is a Senior Data Facility Storage Management Subsystem (DFSMS) Technical Support Engineer in the IBM Systems, Client Enablement, and Systems Assurance team. He has 16 years of experience in DFSMS technical support. He holds a Masters in Business Administration and a Bachelor of Sciences in Mathematics. Michael has six patents that are issued in the computer sciences field, and is a DFSMS Technical Advocate. Currently, he is the team lead for the DFSMS technical support education program. 

Joe Swingler is a STSM and Master Inventor with IBM’s Systems Group, based out of the IBM laboratory in Tucson, Arizona, USA. He is currently a lead architect for IBM’s TS7700 Virtualization Engine. Joe joined IBM in 1999 and started with the virtual tape subsystem team. He began working with ESCON and FICON channel virtualization and eventually became the lead architect of the TS7700 Grid design. Joe has since become a lead architect of TS7700 and has owned the design of many features, including the TS7700 Cloud Storage Tier support. Joe holds a BSEE from Arizona State University. 

Taisei Takai  is a Level 2 Certified Technical Specialist in IBM Japan. His area of expertise is storage mainly based on the z/OS platform. He has more than 25 years of experience in technical support for planning and installing mainframe tape products. He is currently working as a Client Technical Specialist and is involved with most of the TS7700 related projects in Japan. 

Chen Zhu  is a Consulting System Service Representative at the IBM Global Technology Servicesfi (GTS) in Shanghai, China. He joined IBM in 1998 to support and maintain IBM Z products for clients throughout China. Chen has been working in the Technical Support Group (TSG) providing second-level support to IBM Z clients since 2005. His areas of expertise include IBM Z hardware, IBM Parallel Sysplexfi, IBM Tape Library, and IBM FICON connectivity. 

