Tom is the Founder and President of Coughlin Associates and Chairman of the 2007 Data Protection Summit. Tom has over 25 years of experience in the data storage industry as a working engineer and high level technical and corporate executive. For several years he has been collaborating with the Center for Magnetic Recording Research at the University of California, San Diego on the sanitization of disk drive data. In addition to regular technical and market consulting projects he is the publisher of several reports covering technology and applications for digital storage devices and systems including storage components, capital spending, storage technology trends, a series on storage and digital entertainment and a series on system storage. He has 6 patents on magnetic recording and related technologies. Tom is the founder and organizer of the annual Storage Visions Conference (which celebrated its sixth year in 2007). Tom is a senior member and officer of the Santa Clara Valley IEEE, as well as a member of APS, AVS, IDEMA, SNIA, AAAS, and SMPTE.