Storage Toolkit

Quantum contemplates rebound

Ed Frauenheim CNET News.com

Published: 11 Dec 2003 10:45 GMT

It's been a tough half-year for Quantum chief executive Rick Belluzzo.

His company, which makes a variety of data-storage products, including tape drives and disk-based systems, had been making financial progress until it was hit by a sharp drop in revenue from tape media. It suffered net losses of $9m (£5.15m) in the June quarter and of $38m in the September quarter. (The $38m loss included about $27m in accounting charges.) What's more, its revenue fell even as other storage industry companies registered improvement.

About a quarter of Quantum's revenue comes from tape media, which includes sales of its branded products and royalties from other companies that license its tape technology. But prices for tape media have dropped -- a shift that Quantum has attributed to factors such as excess production in Japan.

Belluzzo, a veteran executive who spent years at Hewlett-Packard and served as chief operating officer of Microsoft, nonetheless remains confident he can turn Quantum around. Despite its less-than-sexy status in the tech world, tape and other products to back up and restore data are becoming more and more central to organisations, he said.

"Focusing on data protection, it really is a good place to be right now," said Belluzzo, who took over the 2,000-person company in September 2002.

Quantum has been busy introducing new products. In the last few months it has launched DLTSage, a combination of hardware and software that aims to help customers manage tape drives and prevent problems with them; a disk-based storage device designed to speed up backup and restore functions; a new tape drive; and a new tape library product. (Tape libraries are large, automated units that can hold multiple tape drives and numerous tape cartridges.)

CNET News.com recently sat down with Belluzzo to talk about Quantum and the future of storage technology.