History (1995): Future Domain, New Input for Adaptec

Last month, Adaptec (Milpitas, CA) acquired Future Domain (Irvine, CA) in a $25 million cash transaction.

Jack Allweiss, president and CEO of Future Domain, will serve as director of the Irvine Product Development Center.

Already the definitive leader WW in I/O controllers, Adaptec, a $466 million company, continues to strengthen its position.

“There aren’t any market studies in this sector,” said Francis Massera, VP Europe of Adaptec Europe (Waterloo, Belgium). “But we estimate that we represent about 70% of the world’s I/O controllers market. None of our competitors have broken away and hold no more than 10%.”

“The best known are Acculogic, Advansys, BusLogic, OPT, DTC, Mylex, QLogic, Symbios Logic (formerly NCR Microelectronics, recently bought out by Hyundai), UltraStor and Western Digital. “Future Domain is complimentary to Adaptec in the PCI world and in terms of good R&D in processor-inde-pendent solutions,” he added.

Future Domain is a privately-held company founded in 1982. Summit Ventures of Boston initially backed the fledgling company, whose vision at the time was to create a leading SCSI firm. In 1994, the company expanded its focus to include other forms of desktop I/O, notably hardware and software for Enhanced IDE. For its FY ended 31 March 1994, the 67-person Future Domain recorded revenues of $9.9 million.

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue 91, published on August 1995.

Note: Assets of Adaptec were acquired: disk arrays in 2006 by Newisys for $14.5 million, SnapServer NAS business by Overland Storge in 2008 for $3.6 million, and R&Dchannel business by PMC-Sierra in 2010 for $34 million