History 2002: Adaptec Acquires Tricord Systems Technology Assets

Adaptec will pay $2 million in cash for the technology assets of Tricord Systems.

The latter, founded in 1987, went public in 1993, but did reinvent itself in 1997, switching from Intel-based superservers to high-end clustered NAS, in an attempt to eat into Network Appliance’s market share.

The company briefly even brought in the legendary Rod Canion, founder and former CEO of Compaq, investing $3 million In Tricord, as co-CEO.

Despite of this, the product never really caught on with customers. The company had virtually no sales in 2000, and only $270,000 worth the following year, with net losses of $13.6 and $23.6 million, respectively, only to file for bankruptcy last August, shedding almost all of its workforce in the process.

For a modest price, Adaptec will thus acquire Tricord’s LunaFlare technology, Illumina clustering software.

What does the company plan to do with NAS technology, which it scarcely has any presence? Adaptec is expected to extend its line of external storage, not only to blocks, but also to file-based systems.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 178 on November 2002 from the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter.