Count the chief executive of the world’s largest technology products distributor among the throngs of blockchain skeptics.
Alain Monie, who’s led a diversification effort into higher-margin business lines at Irvine-based Ingram Micro Inc., laughed off any immediate applications of the cryptocurrency transactions tracker, largely because its innerworkings are difficult for noncomputer scientists to comprehend.
“That’s the case of 90% of the people, and we’re in that category,” he told the Business Journal in a wide-ranging interview at the company’s Park Place headquarters.
Ingram Micro’s e-commerce group has begun researching the emerging technology, trying to better understand the digital ledger and potential utilization of it.
“We’re at the very beginning of looking at it,” he said. “This is certainly not something I want to talk about is the future for us.”
Ingram Micro was on pace to beat its 2016 performance at the close of the third quarter, when it posted $42 billion in revenue and net income of $100 million. It’s scheduled to report 2017 financials this month.
Blockchain holds potential for reliably tracking property titles; precious goods’ provenance; art and intellectual property ownership; and securing of supply chains for software and other critical areas.
It’s steeped in mathematical engineering, coding and third-party authentications, and is being tested by the likes of IBM, Walmart and Bank of America.
Monie is much more bullish on connecting devices in the booming Internet of Things segment, such as vertically integrating IT, sensors and software in a combined offering. Ingram’s Canadian unit is doing that kind of work for greenhouses, for instance. In another application, taxicabs in Mexico are outfitted with digital displays and systems.
“We have a small group looking at vertical solutions that we can offer as a package to consumers,” he said. “That’s an area that I think will grow very fast.”
The highly speculative cryptocurrency market has been on a roller coaster for months, swinging wildly by as much as $100 billion in market value in a day. Vitalik Buterin, founder of blockchain network Ethereum, incited matters in a recent tweet, warning that the developing asset class “could drop to near-zero at any time.”
Solid Raise
Irvine-based solid-state drive maker NGD Systems Inc. raised $12.4 million in a Series B financing round led by new investor Partech Ventures in San Francisco.
Other backers included Orange Digital Ventures; the venture capital arm of French telecom Orange SA; Alcor Micro, a Taiwan-based integrated circuit designer; and Silicon Valley early-stage VC firm Benhamou Global Ventures.
Proceeds will fund strategic growth initiatives, including fueling its go-to-market strategy, innovating technology, and moving its 14-nanometer SSD controller into mass production, according to co-founder Nader Salessi.
Solid-state drives use chips to store and transfer data.
The company also announced a $4 million credit line with Silicon Valley Bank.
NGD was established in 2013 by former executives at STEC Inc. and San Jose-based Western Digital Corp., which has a sizable operation in Irvine at its former Park Place headquarters.
Salessi served as vice president of SSD, overseeing program management at Western Digital, and helped create STEC’s SSD product line, growing it from less than $5 million in annual revenue to over $390 million during a six-year tenure.
Vladimir Alves was most recently senior director of SSD SoC Development at Western Digital, overseeing a team of 90 engineers responsible for all enterprise SSD controller design, verification and validation.
Richard Mataya previously served as senior director of SSD Hardware Engineering at Western Digital, overseeing all enterprise SSD products and validation.
Santa Ana-based STEC was acquired in 2013 for $340 million by Western Digital subsidiary Hitachi Global Storage Technologies Ltd.
NGD has raised more than $22 million in funding and employs 30 in Irvine.
Paragon of Efficiency
Irvine-based Paragon Software Group Inc. has expanded ties with Ross Technologies Group with new business aimed at reducing downtime and expediting system and file restoration across the company’s embedded systems product line.
Financial terms of the deal with the Orlando-based company were undisclosed.
Ross Technologies has been a Paragon customer since 2012, receiving data protection and system backup recovery services.
Paragon entered the year as Orange County’s 41st-largest software maker, with 16 employees, according to Business Journal research. Its annual sales top $15 million.
