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 analytical foundation for a career in compiler design, 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 legacy of engineering and enterprise.
Core Technical Expertise
- Storage Area Networks (SAN) & Virtualization
- Fibre Channel Systems & HBAs
- Cloud Infrastructure & Multi-Cloud Hydration
- Distributed Systems Architecture
- Embedded Firmware & Micro-kernels (PowerPC, VAX)
- Compiler Design (Ada 83, Modula-2, Fortran)
- Linux Kernel Optimization & I/O Subsystems
- Knowledge Graphs & Semantic Web (JSON-LD/RDF)
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 Virtual Private Storage Array (VPSA) deployments, containerized storage frameworks, and multi-cloud hydration strategies across petabyte-scale 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
Directed 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; created Fortran-based Ada compiler on VAX 11/780.
US Patents (Storage & Fibre Channel)
Howard Young holds six issued US Patents in storage virtualization, dynamic caching, and Fibre Channel architectures:
Cut-through cache management for a mirrored virtual volume
Dynamic cut-through cache synchronization for mirrored virtual volumes in storage systems.
Managing asynchronous dependent I/O for virtual Fibre Channel
Dependency-aware asynchronous I/O scheduling for virtual Fibre Channel targets (co-inventor: Srinivasa Rao).
Managing expanded capacity of virtual volumes
Online capacity expansion and metadata volume management (co-inventors: S. Rao, K. Agarwal, G. Larimer).
Look-ahead virtual volume meta-data processing
Predictive metadata caching and pre-fetching in split-path storage controllers.
Real-time routing of received commands
Split control/data plane real-time command routing (co-inventors: D. Cinco, T. Anderson).
Dynamic load balancing of Fibre Channel traffic
Adaptive multi-port traffic distribution and dynamic load balancing across Fibre Channel HBAs.
Publications & Public Speaking
"Best practices for migrating data to the cloud" • InfoWorld
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
Architecture for enterprise cloud hydrations, sequential mirroring for zero-downtime migrations, and multi-cloud asynchronous replication.
Zadara Summit Presentations • Conference Sessions
Delivered technical sessions on VPSA Performance Tuning, Enterprise Storage Selection Criteria, and Latency-Free Docker Container Storage.
Tech Tip Tuesdays • Video Series (38+ Episodes)
Hosted technical webisode series covering cloud storage tuning, snapshot management, Docker persistence, and Google Cloud integrations.
Official Profiles & Verified Channels
Connect and verify decentralized identity across official endpoints: