Member for
10 monthsJohn Monroe has been involved with the storage industry for more than 40 years,
beginning in 1980.
• From 1997 to 2022, Monroe was a VP Analyst at Gartner, covering the history and
forecasting the future of consumer and enterprise storage markets.
• From 1990 to 1997, he was the VP of all storage lines at SYNNEX Information
Technologies (now TD SYNNEX), a global distribution and manufacturing services
firm, responsible for the profitable resale and OEM integration of HDDs, controllers,
subsystems, and tape.
• From 1988 to 1990 he was Director of North American Sales for Kalok Corporation
(a startup HDD manufacturer).
• From 1983 to 1988 he was part owner and general manager of Media Winchester,
Ltd., a storage products distributor and integrator which was one of Seagate’s
inaugural “SuperVARs.”
• He began his career in 1980 at Electrolabs, selling ICs, power supplies, cables,
monitors, printers, 8-inch floppy disk drives, and 8-inch HDDs (“oddments of all
things” related to computing electronics).
Unlike most industry analysts, Monroe has had balance-sheet accountability for the
stuff that he studies. Monroe earned a BA degree summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa
from Amherst College in 1976 and a master’s degree in fine arts (MFA) with a merit
scholarship from Columbia University in 1980.