Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mark R. Urdahl


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. Undeniably a successful business man, with some important achievements, on whom a NPOV and verifiable article may well be able to be written. However, that is not the test; notability requires significant coverage in reliable sources. Consensus is clearly that the notability threshold has not been crossed. TerriersFan (talk) 01:08, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Mark R. Urdahl

 * – ( View AfD View log  •  Stats )

References are given, but are only primary references in Mr. Urdahl's roles in companies (bios and such), or news about Qlogic acquiring Ancor in a merger. Unto himself, he does not seem notable to me. -- Dennis The Tiger  (Rawr and stuff) 01:38, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Businesspeople-related deletion discussions.  • Gene93k (talk) 20:10, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the opportunity to ask questions. I'm the author of the article and I consider Mr. Urdahl's contributions to our industry (the data storage industry) to be noteworthy, and would like him to be recognized. But I am not sure how to document or reference his contributions, when many of them were done in the context of industry coalitions, M&A activities, and standards bodies. Mostly, these were not public forums. I'll ask him for advice on where I can find on-line evidence. Or perhaps I'll ask others who were there at the times of these events, but I'm not sure how they can give testimony. But can you point me to the best source of advice on the kinds of references that will show evidence of his involvement? Thx. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.198.189.30 (talk) 14:52, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

I am Joe Mathis, the editor of the first Fibre Channel standard document (FC-PH), as specified by the ANSI X3T11 working group.

I am writing to provide reference for Mark Urdahl, an IBM manager I worked with directly at the IBM RS/6000 Division, whose efforts were critical to the successful formation of the Fibre Channel storage industry, which might not exist as we know it today without Mr. Urdahl's efforts.

Because much of the technical and industry activity then pre-dated popular use of the Internet, there are be few online references. One early reference to Fibre Channel can be found on this link: http://www.t11.org/ftp/t11/member/fc/ph/fcph_43.pdf represents one of a series of documents I co-edited over many years. I hope the following history will illuminate Mr. Urdahl's essential role in creating the Fibre Channel industry.

As background, I originally approached the Fibre Channel committee in 1989 with a proposal for high speed serial channel architecture that the committee adopted as the basis for the architecture, and I was asked to be the technical editor for the Fibre Channel document. Over the course of 4 years, we developed the foundation of the ANSI Standard. However, due to the involvement of many companies and differing technology interests, we drafted the ANSI standard to accommodate multiple technology options, many of which could never be compatible. For example, we allowed short-wave multi-mode optics as well as long-wave single-mode optics, neither of which could interoperate with the other at the physical layer. We allowed SCSI or IPI protocols in the set of standard options, with the idea that vendors could choose to develop and support their protocol of choice. In short, the committee provided many technical options but no strategic direction for industry interoperability.

Mr. Urdahl recognized that Fibre Channel would not be widely adopted (like FDDI before it) if we could not achieve basic interoperability. He also realized that the rapidly growing workstation industry could lead the definition of a true interoperability standard. So he contacted Marlu Allen of HP and Paul Bonderson of Sun (who later co-founded Brocade as its first VP Engineering http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brocade_Communications_Systems#History ), and formed the Fibre Channel Systems Initiative, serving as IBM's management representative and leader of this initiative, which intended to develop interoperability specifications (profiles), educate the industry, and work with independent institutions (i.e., Lawrence Livermore National Labs) for testing. For example, FCSI Profiles adopted SCSI protocol for FC-4 and short-wave multi-mode optics for FC-0, two foundational decisions positively impacting interoperability. I found one reference to this effort: http://hsi.web.cern.ch/HSI/fcs/spec.htm describes the basic difference in the ANSI FC specifications and the FCSI profiles resulting from Mr. Urdahl's efforts. Additionally, Mr. Urdahl assigned one of his program managers to lead the formation of the Fibre Channel Association (also referenced above), which would ultimately adopt the profiles and propagate their use with a broader array of manufacturers, systems integrators, component manufacturers, and software developers.

In short, if it were not for Mr. Urdahl, Fibre Channel might have died the death of FDDI, with a sparse flurry of disparate, incompatible implementations from different vendors. The strategy to get key players together to focus on shipping compatible product represented a critical advancement at a critical time, and gave birth to the Fibre Channel SAN storage industry as we know it today. In fact, the FCSI Profiles developed then formed the basis of what we consider "Fibre Channel" today.

Additionally, I can attest to Mr. Urdahl's role in leading the first institutional investment in Ancor Communications because I personally introduced him to Ancor as a possible strategic partner for IBM. Mr. Urdahl led IBM internal corporate development efforts resulting in both an IBM equity investment in Ancor as well as a strategic partnership for development of Fibre Channel fabric (switches) and host bus adapters. Given Ancor was one of the few available technology options in the early days of Fibre Channel, shoring them up was strategically significant.

Last, Mr. Urdahl's strategic relationships in the Fibre Channel storage industry enabled him to lead the purchase of the NetWisdom SAN monitoring business from Finisar Corp. to create Virtual Instruments. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.54.114.82 (talk) 20:50, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Reply to Mr. Mathis: Sir, first of all, thank you for your efforts. Wikipedia does not actually require online sources, simply reliable ones. If you can point to some sort of reliable, verifiable written source that is independent of Mr. Urdahl (has no appearance of a conflict of interest) and discusses his contributions from a neutral point of view, it would be useable. Unfortunately, without such sources (a minimum of two), he would not meet our General Notability Guideline. Please note that on Wikipedia, notability is not the same thing as importance: he and his work may be important (and therefore meet the "worthy of note" definition of "notable"), but unless a third party has written about his importance, he's not notable in the sense of "has been noted," which is what Wikipedia requires. - Jorgath (talk) (contribs) 16:01, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment Conflict of interest here. Mr. Mathis is a "Fellow" (employee? paid consultant?) at Virtual Instruments (VI) where Mark Urdahl is former CEO and still an advisor, director and major shareholder.  Reliable, verifiable independent sources are needed to support information in Wikipedia.  Sorry, Mr. Mathis, but your personal testimonial must be suspect since it appears that you work for the subject of the article. DocTree (talk) 18:59, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Comment This article from Forbes might help establish notability, if someone can see the whole thing rather than just a snippet. More generally, searching for Mark Urdahl (without the middle initial) produces quite a few news stories in computer trade publications, as well as quite a few about different people of the same name. The problem is that while I think there is a fair chance of enough among them to establish notability, one would first have to sift past the ones that are just quoting him and the minimally reheated press releases. PWilkinson (talk) 15:35, 28 April 2012 (UTC) 
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Ron Ritzman (talk) 00:05, 29 April 2012 (UTC)




 * Delete The subject seems to have a controversial history, judging from what one finds on the net. As this is a BLP, we require high quality sources to be able to present a neutral account and these seem to be lacking. Warden (talk) 16:52, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete per Colonel Warden. BLP makes the bar higher to meet, and this article doesn't meet it. -- Lord Roem (talk) 17:31, 7 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete Subject is not particularly notable, just one of tens of thousands of successful businessmen. Fails WP:BLP. The article is promotional, citing mostly primary sources announcing his taking various executive positions with a number of different companies.  The article fails WP:NPOV by not mentioning information in reliable sources that are detailed in an on-line community news blog .   I did find an interview at . The WP article citation []to support that he was key in FCSAN doesn't even mention his name. In reply to the long testimonials above, that activity predated common use of the Internet is irrelevant.  Articles about notable persons and events contained in legitimate newspapers, magazines and journals are available in on-line indexes and archives to cover the period before the Internet.  I frequently use those archives to find citations and sources for Wikipedia articles that I write or to which I contribute.  I found nothing indicating that Mr. Urdahl is notable or any justification for an article about him in Wikipedia. DocTree (talk) 18:34, 8 May 2012 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.