Seagate Technology on Monday sid that Gary Gentry has rejoined Seagate to lead its solid state drive (SSD) business as senior vice president of SSD business unit. The appointment of a recognized flash storage specialist underlines importance of SSD business for Seagate.

Gary Gentry will have responsibility for driving Seagate leadership in the SSD space, with time-to-market, competitive product offerings. He will be located in Longmont, Colorado and will report directly to Rocky Pimentel, chief sales and marketing officer.

The appointment of Mr. Gentry clearly means that Seagate is revisiting its attitude towards solid-state drives in general and towards its SSD strategy in particular. With a dedicated executive to review Seagate's SSD strategies appointed, it will be interesting to see what will be Seagate's new step on the market of NAND flash storage. Specifically, it will be interesting to see whether Seagate will attempt to acquire an established SSD maker, or will try to quickly develop its own lineup of solid-state drives for different market segments.

Mr. Gentry has over 25 years of experience in the storage industry, including most recently as the general manager of the enterprise SSD division of Micron Corp. Prior to rejoining Seagate, he held leadership positions focusing on solid-state technologies at Spansion Corp. and Storage Genetics. He also served as chief marketing officer for Maxtor, and provided strategic consulting to Hitachi Global Storage Systems. While at Seagate he held various management positions including vice president of strategic marketing and planning.

Tags: Seagate, SSD, Micron, NAND, Flash