Normally on Memorial Day DCIG’s staff takes the day off from its normal routine to enjoy some time with friends and family. However today we make an exception to that rule as DCIG was saddened to learn this morning that IceWEB’s chairmen and CEO, John Signorello, passed away late last week on Friday, May 25, 2012. On a personal note, this announcement hit me a little harder than most as John was both a friend who I spoke to just a couple of weeks ago and the same age (45) as me.
In reading through the information included in IceWEB’s press release from last Friday, it appears that a genetic heart defect was the cause of his passing. But as someone who knew John personally and spoke to him on a number of occasions, the thought that anything was actually wrong with him is almost unfathomable.
For those of you who have never met John, he was an irrepressible individual, full of boundless energy and someone who I liked almost immediately. I first met John a a couple of years ago at a get together at a storage event sponsored by IceWEB and he was always “Mr Positive” about the future of IceWEB, the team he had assembled and the technology it had to offer.
After that initial meeting, we stayed in regular contact with one another talking mostly about how IceWEB was evolving, the state of the storage industry as a whole and how he was leading IceWEB to build a next generation storage platform. The early fruits of his efforts in leading changes internally with IceWEB became evident late last year when the IceWEB storage platform won Best in Class for its Replication technology in the DCIG 2012 Midrange Array Buyer’s Guide.
In any case, DCIG and everyone on its team wants to express our condolences and best wishes to John’s family and the IceWEB team. John was a fun, friendly and motivated person and will be missed most by all of those who knew him best.