Quantum units enjoy strong second quarter

Storage vendor Quantum has released results for two of its subsidiaries for the second quarter of its financial year 2001.

Storage vendor Quantum has released results for two of its subsidiaries for the second quarter of its financial year 2001.

DLT and Storage Systems Group, the storage solutions arm of Quantum, recorded profit of $44m on turnover of $362m for the quarter. Turnover for the DLT tape business was also up, due to higher sales in drives, media and media royalty.

Storage Systems, encompassing the newly-formed Snap Appliances Group which manufactures Snap NAS products and ATL Enterprise Solutions, is maintaining its high profit margins, representing 30 per cent of total sales for the subsidiaries.

Quantum's Hard Disk Drive Group also released healthy sales figures, with an increase of seven per cent on last year's results. Nine million hard disk drives were shipped during the period, and 8.4 million desktop drives.

This was one million up on last year, due to the high-selling, higher-capacity Atlas drives, and pricing initiatives implemented by the company.

Although DLT sales may be down next year, the firm has predicted that increasing growth in storage solutions will mean that sales for both subsidiaries will be even in the third quarter.

Rival StorageTek has also announced turnover in the third quarter ended 30 October of $8.4m and profit of $6.3m.

Industry analysts have attributed Quantum's financial strength to several key storage products released in this quarter. The vendor's StorageNet 6000 series of storage domain managers, which combines hardware and software components, offers infrastructure for managing data in open storage area networks.

Also, the StorageTek tape drive series T9940 is said to deliver storage for archived back-up.