George Kurian vs Charles Liang

George Kurian

CEO of NetApp

BIO: Mr. George Kurian has been the Chief Executive Officer of NetApp, Inc. since June 1, 2015 and as its President since May 20, 2016. Mr. Kurian served as an Executive Vice President of Product Operations at NetApp, Inc. since September 20, 2013. He served as Senior Vice President of the Data ONTAP Group at NetApp since December 2011. He oversaw the product roadmap and engineering execution of the Data ONTAP Operating System, the world's most widely deployed storage operating system and the associated On Command Storage Management product portfolio. He served as Senior Vice President of the Storage Solutions Group at NetApp where he oversaw the NetApp solutions portfolio and joint partner technology integration roadmaps. He joined NetApp in April 2011. Prior to joining NetApp, he served as Vice President and General Manager of the Application Networking and Switching Technology Group at Cisco Systems. In this role, he was responsible for Cisco products for the Modular Campus LAN Switching and WAN Application Delivery markets. He also led Cisco's successful development of products and solutions to enable Ethernet-based Converged Networks for Video, Voice and Data. Prior to Cisco, Mr. Kurian served as the Vice President for Product Management and Strategy at Akamai Technologies and led Software Engineering and Product Management teams at Oracle Corporation. Mr. Kurian has been a Director of NetApp, Inc. since June 1, 2015. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering degree from Princeton University and a Master of Business Administration degree from Stanford University.

Charles Liang

CEO of Super Micro Computer

BIO: Mr. Charles Liang founded Super Micro Computer, Inc. in September 1993 and has been its Chief Executive Officer & President since September 1993. Mr. Liang has been developing server system architectures and technologies for two decades and granted many server technology patents. Subsequent notable patents include a redundant cooling power supply technology (1998) and a method and architecture for monitoring the health of servers across data networks (2000). He served as Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President of OSRAM GmbH since September 1993. From July 1991 to August 1993, he served as President and Chief Design Engineer of Micro Center Computer Inc., and from January 1988 to April 1991, he served as Senior Design Engineer and Project Leader for Chips & Technologies Inc., and Suntek Information International Group. He worked on high-tech projects and designed several outstanding products such as a microprocessor-based PH and ion analyzer. He has been the Chairman of the Board of Super Micro Computer, Inc. since September 1993. Mr. Liang has been a Director of Super Micro Computer, Inc. since September 1993. He served as a Director of OSRAM GmbH since September 1993. His studies at Arlington focused on Advanced Digital systems and he developed a working model for a medical expert system that diagnosed illnesses. He holds many coveted technology patents, some of which were awarded while he was still in university. Mr. Liang studied M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from National Taiwan University of Science & Technology in Taiwan.