An Indian IT wizard who prospered in the Silicon Valley has now done his bit for the area. He has donated a hefty $1 million (Rs 4.5 crore) to the University of California Santa Cruz.
Kumar Malavalli's bounty will help institute an endowment chair for research in storage networking
systems -- a specialised area in which he made a name for himself and was honoured with a place in the Silicon Valley Engineering Council's 'Hall of Fame' last year.
Malavalli's two start-ups, Brocade Communications and InMage Systems, have done exceedingly well over the past few years and he decided it's time to return the favours.
The donation that the low-profile techie made last month has excited the dons of UCSC's Baskin School of Engineering. Says Darrell Long, director of the Storage Systems Research Centre: "I am very pleased that someone who knows as much as he does about this field has decided to make such a generous contribution to our research."
The man with a string of US patents under his belt says data storage technology has evolved into a mainstream technology that is now affecting all walks of life. But an optimal solution is still to be found to store, replicate and back up all the information that is being generated.