Nick Howell

Builder. Strategist. Technologist. The full range.

Who Am I?

Nearly 30 years in enterprise infrastructure, and I’ve never stayed in one lane long enough to get typecast in one.

I started in the late 90s outside the buildings that would become the first generation of enterprise datacenters, running diesel generators, pulling power, doing the work nobody photographed. No degree, no roadmap. I earned an MCSE in 18 months, then a CCNA and CCNP, talked my way into rooms I had no business being in, and then earned the right to stay.

Since then: federal contracting with a Top Secret clearance in the post-9/11 era, virtualizing Oracle and Exchange for a healthcare company before VMware had a talking point for it, joining Cohesity as employee #46 in stealth mode, and 15 years at NetApp building things that didn’t exist before I got there.

The consistent thread isn’t a technology. It’s a pattern. Show up at the leading edge of a shift. Get genuinely technical about it fast. Build the organizational motion around it. Do it publicly enough that other practitioners trust the work.

I’m a builder who happens to be good at strategy, and a strategist who never stopped getting his hands dirty. Those two things aren’t supposed to coexist cleanly on an org chart. I’ve never cared about that.

Executive Mission

I’m relentlessly focused on aligning innovation with execution, building strategies, teams, and ecosystems that create long-term value. I believe great leadership is rooted in clarity, empathy, and momentum, and I bring all three to every challenge I take on.

Core Strengths

Professional Experience

NetApp (2011 – 2026)
Global Field CTO, Technology Alliances (September 2025 – May 2026)

The title said Technology Alliances. What I actually did was learn.

I stepped into a role spanning Cisco, Red Hat, VMware, AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Nutanix at the exact moment AI infrastructure partnerships became the most consequential conversation in the industry. I used that position the way I've used every major transition in my career: I went deep before I said anything publicly.

The first half of this period was AI inference. Not from briefings. From first principles. I worked through NVIDIA's inference stack systematically: TensorRT-LLM, vLLM, SGLang, Dynamo, disaggregated prefill and decode, KV cache architecture, parallelism strategies, and inference economics. I ran workloads in my homelab. I wrote a 13-page technical learning document for myself before I published a word publicly. Earned credibility, not borrowed.

The second half shifted to agentic systems. Designing, building, and operating multi-agent architectures on my own infrastructure. Understanding how these systems actually behave in production rather than in demos.

Global Field CTO – Cloud/ISV/GTM Strategy (2019 – 2025)

As part of the founding team for NetApp’s Office of the CTO, I carved out a unique role that blurred the lines between strategy, storytelling, and community building. I didn’t just represent our cloud vision. I helped shape it, evangelize it, and scale its impact. From executive briefings to major conferences, I translated technical direction into community traction.

Whether launching our first developer ecosystem, building ISV alliances, or driving merger conversations, I focused on aligning technical truth with business growth. My goal was always to connect innovation with execution, and bring people along for the ride.

Highlights & Achievements

  • Co-founded and scaled the Office of the CTO for Cloud, influencing long-term roadmap and technical vision.
  • Built NetApp’s first developer ecosystem strategy, launching a community of 6K+ engineers across Discord, forums, and live events.
  • Led DevRel and technical storytelling for NetAppTV and YouTube, hosting and scripting episodic content that reached tens of thousands.
  • Incubated and launched NetApp Nucleus, a global user group initiative redefining customer engagement, community structure, and field activation.
  • Drove ISV partnership strategy and collaborated on early-stage M&A evaluations to identify new growth vectors.
  • Launched NetApp ONAIR in January 2023, a live-format content series bridging engineering and executive audiences.
Global Technical Lead – Cloud-First Partners (2018 – 2019)

As NetApp began ramping its Cloud Data Services offerings, I stepped into a pivotal enablement role for our partner ecosystem. Working closely with executive leadership, I helped translate the strategy behind our cloud portfolio into real-world value for channel partners, building the materials, relationships, and messaging they needed to launch and succeed in the cloud space.

Highlights & Achievements

  • Led partner GTM efforts for Cloud-First Services, ensuring partner readiness across technical enablement, messaging, and delivery alignment.
  • Created and delivered solution-focused training that translated NetApp’s evolving cloud portfolio into real-world partner value.
  • Enabled strategic alignment between NetApp’s cloud roadmap and partner execution through technical storytelling and field engagement.
Technical Marketing Engineer – Virtualization Solutions (2011 – 2015)

During my time as a TME, I focused on bridging the gap between product teams and practitioners in the field. I created trusted technical content, trained partners and field engineers, and helped shape NetApp’s early virtualization strategy. My work became the connective tissue between engineering, product, and the real-world challenges customers faced in adopting hybrid infrastructure.

Highlights & Achievements

  • Developed NetApp’s original best practices for VMware integrations, driving consistency across customer environments and internal teams.
  • Delivered live technical trainings to field engineers and partners, earning a reputation as the go-to subject matter expert for virtualization solutions.
  • Launched and hosted the NetApp Communities Podcast, a precursor to TechONTAP, as a modern platform for education and advocacy.
Cohesity (2015 – 2016)

Global Field CTO / Chief Evangelist (2015 – 2016)

I joined Cohesity in its stealth phase as employee #46, reporting directly to both the COO and CEO. I quickly took the lead on driving its public narrative and GTM strategy. Collaborating directly with the executive team, I helped shape our external messaging and internal alignment across business development, marketing, and product strategy.

My work bridged early product management and technical storytelling, supporting strategic decisions and roadmap prioritization. I regularly briefed analysts and influencers, turning early feedback into tactical insight that helped refine our offerings and market fit.

Highlights & Achievements

  • Joined Cohesity pre-launch as employee #46 to help define and scale GTM, business development, and messaging strategy alongside C-level leadership.
  • Supported early product management prioritization by aligning roadmap focus with analyst, partner, and customer input.
  • Led executive briefings and analyst/influencer outreach to help shape industry perception and build momentum pre- and post-launch.
IPC Healthcare (2006 – 2011)

Head of Datacenter Ops – Virtualization Architect (2006 – 2011)

At IPC, I led the datacenter modernization initiative that transformed a highly fragmented infrastructure into a secure, scalable virtualized environment. This work directly supported our readiness for IPO and regulatory compliance while unlocking major cost and performance efficiencies.

Highlights & Achievements

  • Consolidated Active Directory domains across 27 remote sites into a unified enterprise-wide infrastructure.
  • Migrated 1000+ servers to VMware, introduced Cisco Nexus 10Gb networking, and centralized datacenter operations.
  • Virtualized mission-critical applications including Oracle, SQL Server, and Exchange.
  • Prepared HIPAA and SOX documentation for IPO-readiness; conducted biannual audits to ensure sustained compliance and resilience.
National Network Data Svcs (1998 – 2006)

Infrastructure Engineer & Federal Contractor (1999 – 2005)

This was my proving ground. I didn’t just rack servers. I helped build the actual environments they lived in. From powering up entire datacenters to modernizing some of the earliest enterprise IT stacks, this era defined my technical roots. Working as a contractor meant adapting quickly, sometimes installing infrastructure, other times designing it, across financial institutions and federal agencies. That flexibility, paired with a Top Secret clearance, allowed me to step into sensitive and mission-critical roles long before most people my age had even set foot in a datacenter.

Highlights & Achievements

  • Designed and deployed Active Directory infrastructure during NT4 to Windows 2000 migrations across multiple Fortune 500 clients.
  • Built Bank of America's national intranet backbone, streamlining internal communications and document management systems.
  • Held Top Secret clearance (1998–2003), supporting secure federal programs requiring strict confidentiality and resilience.

Education & Certifications

Executive & Leadership Development

Leadership Beyond the Resume

I’ve always gravitated toward complex, high-stakes team environments, even early in my life and career. While at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, I competed in the Newport to Bermuda Race, a 635-mile offshore sailing challenge that demanded precision, endurance, and trust under pressure. A few years later, I led a 40-person international World of Warcraft raid team, coordinating strategy and execution across time zones multiple nights a week. Both experiences shaped my leadership instincts long before I ever held a formal title, setting me on a path that’s defined my approach in the corporate world ever since.

Nothing is impossible Fail Fast Tomorrow is another day

Where I’ve Been & Where I’m Headed

I’m a free agent. If you’re looking for someone who brings technical depth, strategic range, and the ability to build momentum in public, that’s me.

I’m not looking for a title. I’m looking for a room where the full range of what I do is seen as an asset, not a problem to manage. Builder. Strategist. Technologist. Executive communicator. Content creator. Community catalyst. These things reinforce each other, in my hands they always have.

I’ve been at the leading edge of every major infrastructure shift for 30 years. Virtualization. Cloud. AI inference. Agentic systems. I don’t watch these waves from the shore. I’m already in the water.

If that sounds like where you are, my DMs are open.

Nick Howell

Feel free to download a PDF version here.

⬇️ Download Resume (PDF)