Of course, Quantum today is predominantly a tape drive and media supplier. For the year ended March 31, 2002, tape drives and media accounted for about $800 million out of Quantum's $1.1 billion in revenues. By 2005, Brown says he wants half of the company's revenues to come from disk-based backup systems, NAS servers, tape automation libraries, and storage support and integration services. Currently, those business lines account for about 27 percent of sales.
It won't get there easily. In the NAS market, it's the leader in terms of volume of units shipped, with more than 100,000 Snap servers sold to date. But it plays at the low end of the market, where the margins are razor-thin, and what's more, Quantum is competing there with none other than (ulp) Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT), whose Windows Server Appliance Kit has been slurping up market share like an underfed hog (see Microsoft's SAK Attack). IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) and Dell Computer Corp. (Nasdaq: DELL) are two of the largest vendors shipping NAS systems based on Microsoft's SAK. To play in a NAS segment with better margins, Quantum has introduced the Guardian 14000, a Linux-based NAS system aimed at the midrange market (see Quantum Casts Its Lot With Linux).
The company's also betting that its still-in-beta DX30 -- one of the first disk-based devices purpose-built for online backup -- will become a healthy new business (see Quantum Slips Disks Into Backup). But as executives admit, while there is some strong initial interest, this is a very early-stage category and the DX30 won't be a major source of revenue anytime soon. Finally, Quantum sees potential in ramping its services offerings, a relatively small part of its overall business today at $70 million for the fiscal year ended in March. It remains an open question as to how rapidly the company can expand this side of the house.
Brown, along with Barbara Hoey Nelson, Quantum's EVP of corporate marketing and strategy, recently sat down with Byte and Switch Senior Editor Todd Spangler. Read as they talk about:
Byte and Switch: Your earnings will be lower than you expected for the first quarter of your 2003 fiscal year. Why?
To realize the benefits of cloud-native software, an application must actually be cloud-native—designed to run in the cloud, interacting with disaggregated cloud services, fully manageable as code—to deliver the expected benefits.
By combining resources and expertise, the AI-Enabled ICT Workforce Consortium will offer a blueprint for how industries can adapt to an AI-dominated future.
IT leaders should heed the guidance of cybersecurity insurance providers who think businesses should prioritize security education, incident preparedness, regular internal audits, and ongoing vulnerability scanning and patching.
