Living the American Dream E130
Gene Leyzarovich spent the last 30 years chasing the American Dream. He joined the Tycoons to talk about the journey from Moscow, Russia refugee to Pittsburgh, PA business owner.
Gene talks about how having a plan is imperative, and that what you put into a business is so much more important than what you get out of a business. He also discusses working with a business partner and how to stay focused after 28 years of business.
Tune in to hear about how Gene has found his American Dream and is working every day to make it a success.
AC&NC™ meets the evolving needs for data storage, protection, and management. They leverage leading technologies to offer high-value solutions for NAS, SANs, clouds, and hyper-converged infrastructures (HCIs). Since 1994, our customers have spanned virtually every industry, and range from Fortune 500 enterprises to small and medium-sized firms. They support environments from data centers and clouds to branch offices and remote sites.
AC&NC has prospered for decades thanks to our experienced management team and a business model focused on providing every customer with highly competitive solutions, services, and support. They align AC&NC’s priorities with yours to ensure your systems remain effective throughout their life cycles.
They provide individual components, custom builds solutions or delivers infrastructure as a service. We can supply purpose-built storage appliances or entire racks and stacks, including storage, servers, switches, and software.
We offer both cost-effective systems for applications like video surveillance, Internet of Things, and archiving, and the performance and capacity for big-data use cases like HPC, media production, medical imaging or flight simulations. We enable small and mid-sized organizations to undertake big data projects. Whatever you require, we will always provide strong returns on investment.
Their software solutions deliver on the promise of software-defined storage. They empower converged systems to outperform disaggregated products while offering a file system that scales out to 18 million terabytes. You will gain advanced management and the highest levels of resiliency and data protection. We eliminate data loss, ensuring compliance and the integrity of all data assets.
In addition to the private sector and non-profits, AC&NC services governments at all levels. They are a longtime GSA contractor meeting agency and department needs. We build storage appliances for Homeland Security data collection devices and our JetStor® FC storage platforms support Self-Encrypting Drives (SEDs) for classified sites. Moreover, we are a COSTARS provider.
Their JetStor storage platforms integrate the fastest connectivity, architectures, and processors with proven durability, plug’n play ease, and functionality like deduplication and tiering. JetStor RAID arrays offer a selection of SAN (Fibre channel or iSCSI) or NAS connectivity with multiple host ports for parallel-path performance or clustered environments. We provide all-flash arrays for maximum I/O applications, SAS and SATA systems for economical storage, and hybrid systems. Whether for file, block, or unified storage, JetStor solutions are engineered for scalability and uncompromising performance.
They complement JetStor products with a portfolio of JBODs, high-density servers, switches, and HBAs, enabling our customers to obtain complete, integrated solutions from a trusted vendor.
Service
They deliver solutions in 24–48 hours tailored to your application requirements, including mean time between failure (MTTF), mean time to repair (MTTR), quality of service (QoS), and high availability (HA) specifications. JetStor engineers pre-certify the industry’s best-of-class SSD, SAS, and SATA drives to deliver outstanding reliability.
To help customers meet their business and IT objectives, AC&NC offers a variety of storage consulting services, database optimization, storage architecture services, disaster recovery services, and data archiving.
They offer support-as-a-service by remotely monitoring and configuring your solutions. They can meet with you online and should you require extensive or urgent assistance, our support staff can travel to your site.
AC&NC backs its solutions with industry-leading 3–5 year warranties. Our optional advanced replacement program ships replacement drives within 24 hours. We also offer a black hole policy on drives for classified sites.
AC&NC has strategic partners in the US, UK, and Canada that sell our solutions to their customers. We have OEM customers who private label our products under their brands.
More than 30 years ago, Gene Leyzarovich arrived in his new home of Pittsburgh as a refugee from Moscow, Russia. Only two years later, while he was completing his education at the University of Pittsburgh and working night shifts at UPMC, Gene founded Advanced Computer & Network Corporation (AC&NC) to build high-performance JetStor (US federal trademark) storage systems and he has never looked back.
In over 28 years in business, AC&NC has installed its JetStor RAID (redundant array of independent disks) systems for over 4,000 clients in numerous locations in the United States, Canada, Asia, Eastern and Western Europe, and Australia.
Under Gene’s leadership, AC&NC has built a prestigious customer list that includes companies like Sony, Microsoft, Starbucks, CBS, and the fifth largest food retailing company Supervalu. JetStor brand powers research in a wide range of disciplines at NASA, Department of Energy, National Institutes of Health, Naval Research Lab, NIST and Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center; supports the work of US Department of State; and helps strengthen world-renowned institutions, from Carnegie Mellon University to Duke University, Columbia University, Yale University, Rice University and Stanford University, to name a few. AC&NC has established a big presence in the UK, with over 55% of UK Police forces relying on JetStor appliances.
A finalist in the EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2016 and the winner Immigrant of the Year Global Pittsburgh – Technological Innovation in 2017, Gene recognizes that risk-taking is an inherent part of running a small business that is in direct competition with multi-billion dollar corporations. The challenge of that competition and the thrill of coming ahead have motivated Gene to develop AC&NC JetStor as a nimble company that meets the customer’s needs in creative and innovative ways, including his involvement with new partners at the development stages of new products.
Gene has been a sponsor of USENIX, a 501(c)(3) Advanced Computing Systems Association, for 15 years. Gene has been a founding sponsor of the League of Professional System Administrators and a member of Pittsburgh Technology Council. Together with his family, Gene also supports the vibrancy and vitality of our region with contributions to Pittsburgh Opera and United Jewish Federation.
CRN Magazine named Gene Leyzarovich and AC&NC JetStor The 50 Coolest Software-Defined Storage Vendors: The 2022 Storage 100 List.
Follow JetStor on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
About the Show
Tycoons of Small Biz spotlights the true backbone of the American economy, the true tycoons of business in America… the owners, founders and CEO’s of small businesses. Join hosts, Austin L Peterson, Landon Mance and the featured tycoons LIVE every Tuesday at 1 pm, right here on Business RadioX and your favorite podcast platform.
About Your Hosts
Austin Peterson is a Comprehensive Financial Planner and co-founder of Backbone Planning Partners in Scottsdale, AZ. Austin is a registered rep and investment advisor representative with Lincoln Financial Advisors. Prior to joining Lincoln Financial Advisors, Austin worked in a variety of roles in the financial services industry.
He began his career in financial services in the year 2000 as a personal financial advisor with Independent Capital Management in Santa Ana, CA. Austin then joined Pacific Life Insurance Company as an internal wholesaler for their variable annuity and mutual fund products. After Pacific Life, Austin formed his own financial planning company in Southern California that he built and ran for 6 years and eventually sold when he moved his family to Salt Lake City to pursue his MBA.
After he completed his MBA, Austin joined Crump Life Insurance where he filled a couple of different sales roles and eventually a management role throughout the five years he was with Crump. Most recently before joining Lincoln Financial Advisors in February 2015, Austin spent 2 years as a life insurance field wholesaler with Symetra Life Insurance Company. Austin is a Certified Financial Planner Professional and Chartered Life Underwriter. In 2021, Austin became a Certified Business Exit Consultant® (CBEC®) to help entrepreneurs plan to exit their businesses.
Austin and his wife of 23 years, Robin, have two children, AJ (21) and Ella (18) and they reside in Gilbert, Arizona. He is a graduate of California State University, Fullerton with a Bachelor of Arts in French and of Brigham Young University’s Marriott School of Management with a Master of Business Administration with an emphasis in sales and entrepreneurship.
Connect with Austin on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Landon Mance is a Financial Planner and co-founder of Backbone Planning Partners out of Las Vegas, Nevada. He rebranded his practice in 2020 to focus on serving small business owners after operating as Mance Wealth Management since 2015 when Landon broke off from a major bank and started his own “shop.”
Landon comes from a family of successful entrepreneurs and has a passion and excitement for serving the business community. This passion is what brought about the growth of Backbone Planning Partners to help business owners and their families. At Backbone Planning, we believe small business owners’ personal and business goals are intertwined, so we work with our clients to design a financial plan to support all aspects of their lives.
In 2019, Landon obtained the Certified Exit Planning Advisor (CEPA) designation through the Exit Planning Institute. With this certification, Backbone Planning Partners assists business owners through an ownership transition while focusing on a positive outcome for their employees and meeting the business owner’s goals. Landon is also a member of the Business Intelligence Institute (BII) which is a collaborative group that shares tools, resources and personnel, and offers advanced level training and technical support to specifically serve business owners. In 2021, Landon became a Certified Business Exit Consultant® (CBEC®) to help entrepreneurs plan to exit their businesses by counseling owners about exit options, estimating the value of the business, preparing the business for exit and tax considerations.
Landon enjoys spending time with his beautiful wife, stepson, and new baby twins. He grew up in sunny San Diego and loves visiting his family, playing a round of golf with friends, and many other outdoor activities. Landon tries to make a difference in the lives of children in Las Vegas as a part of the leadership team for a local non-profit. He regularly visits the children that we work with to remind himself of why it’s so important to, “be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
Landon received his B.S. from California State University Long Beach in business marketing and gets the rest of his education through the school of hard knocks via his business owner clients.
Connect with Landon on LinkedIn.
