It’s not the data but what you do with it.
The excitement in data storage these days seems to be less about computers and more about software that generates and manages bits of information.
Orange County has a couple of hopefuls. Take the recent funding of Irvine-based Zetera Corp., a developer of software that helps consumer electronics devices access and store data via the Internet.
The company recently raised $13.5 million in its first round of funding from venture investors. The round was led by New York-based private equity firm Warburg Pincus LLC and included existing investor San Francisco-based WI Harper.
Zetera’s software sits inside electronics and allows them to more efficiently send and store data on remote servers.
“Our goal is to partner with the best companies in the storage industry and help them deliver better performing products,” said Chuck Cortright, Zetera’s chief executive.
Other storage software makers have received investments lately.
Aliso Viejo-based Datallegro Inc. is one.
Earlier this month, the maker of data storage and search software closed its second round of funding in the past nine months, this one worth $15 million.
Datallegro’s software is installed in a company’s server room.
Then there’s Irvine-based Avamar Technologies Inc.
This 5-year-old software company sports $51 million in funding from big names such as Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley and CMGI Inc.
That has some watching Avamar as a possible candidate for a stock offering or an acquisition by some of the big names in data storage.
Avamar’s product solves a simple problem. When a data entry is created, an archiving system often saves a version of it. But sometimes, data are lost or don’t make it to a central storage point. Avamar’s software makes sure there aren’t two exact copies of data on a storage network.
McGregor’s Ups and Downs
Scott McGregor, Broadcom Corp.’s chief executive, has weathered more of a roller coaster in his first months than most new guys do.
Business ups and downs, stock ups and downs,and don’t forget the ups and downs of Forbes magazine’s decidedly unscientific chief executive approval ratings.
McGregor debuted in January, when he started at Broadcom, with a 56% approval rating. It then climbed to 68% in February and 92% in March, only to plummet to 59% in April. It seems his numbers might be on the rise in May, now at 75%.
While the poll isn’t an accurate measure of public opinion, it isn’t surprising that Internet users who bother to answer the poll think McGregor is doing a good job.
While sales at Broadcom fell in the first quarter from a year earlier, the chipmaker still managed to boost profits and said it expects a problem of unsold chips largely to be over (see related story, page 1).
Broadcom’s sales were off 4% to $550 million in the first quarter. Net income was up 73% to $69 million. The results narrowly beat Wall Street estimates. The chipmaker also said it expects sales to grow about 5% in the second quarter to about $575 million.
“We were pleased with our progress in the first quarter as revenue increased over the fourth quarter of 2004 and the company again generated strong cash flow from operations, leading to record levels of cash and marketable securities,” McGregor said in a statement. “Looking forward, we are experiencing a strengthening in customer orders, leading us to believe that many of the customer inventory issues that affected our fourth and first quarter results are now behind us.”
Hard Driving
Quick,name a computer disk drive maker in OC that’s not Lake Forest-based Western Digitial Corp.
If you’re scratching your head, you’re not thinking of the elephant in the room,Toshiba America Information Systems Inc., the Irvine-based unit of Tokyo’s Toshiba Corp.
Well, Toshiba made a buy that will help strengthen its competition with Western Digital. It acquired a drive design center in Fremont from Panasonic Shikoku Elec-tronics Co., part of Matsushita Electric In-dustrial Co.
The buy is aimed at helping put “critical resources closer to Toshiba customers,” the company said in a statement. Terms of the agreement weren’t disclosed.
“Acquisition of this design center greatly bolsters our global engineering organization and represents Toshiba’s commitment to driving innovation in small form factor hard disk drives,” said Scott Maccabe, vice president of Toshiba’s storage device division.
The facility will focus on making microdrives for use in consumer electronics such as digital music players, laptops and other devices. Sales of these types of drives are expected to soar in the coming years.
Toshiba competes more directly now with Western Digital. Last year, Western Digital came out with drives for portable computers after exiting the market in the late 1990s amid heavy competition, including from Toshiba. As part of the deal, about 50 Panasonic engineers are set to join Toshiba.
