Tandberg to take Quantum leap

Storage vendor to take over digital linear tape and SuperDLT drive supply

Storage vendor Tandberg Data is to take over digital linear tape (DLT) and SuperDLT drive supply to Quantum's channel, after Quantum's DLTtape Group announced last week that it is to withdraw from the European market.

The DLTtape Group will continue to service its major European original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), but will otherwise operate only in the US, said Jo-Ann Downey, vice president of worldwide channel marketing at Quantum.

Tandberg will now manufacture and sell the tape drive families to DLTtape Group's two distributors, Ideal Hardware and Avnet.

"We have essentially extended the licensing agreement with Tandberg," she said. "We think that partners, distributors and OEMs will get a higher level of focus from the agreement."

Tandberg is currently in negotiations with Avnet and Ideal to discuss continuing supply. "We are looking to make the changeover clean and swift for the channel," said Steve Smith, sales and marketing director at Tandberg.

He added that there would be no product changes. "We realised this is the best way of maximising resources for the DLT business," he explained.

Both companies have said that channel disruption will be minimal or non-existent.

There will be a 90-day transition period, due to be completed in the fourth quarter of this year, to give partners the chance to transfer their business from a Quantum-branded company to a Tandberg-branded one, although "most partners already work with both brands anyway", according to Downey.

Seamus Twohig, relationship director at Ideal Hardware, said: "We have been supplying DLT for more than 10 years, so it doesn't really matter to us who makes it anymore. We will continue to support the format, and we are speaking with Tandberg."

Recent IDC figures put the DLT drive as the dominant tape technology in the mid-market. "DLT will continue its strong growth through 2005, as a result of tape drive integration into libraries and automation," said IDC analyst Peter Brown.