Overland Storage Reaches 1,500 WW Channel Partners in 2011

Base of FastTrack users grew to 4,000

Overland Storage, Inc. announced that in 2011 the number of registered partners participating in the company's FastTrack Program grew from 290 unique partners to more than 1,500 worldwide.  Products range from the Overland NEO Series Tape Libraries, SnapServer NAS DX1 and DX2 Scalable Rackmount Storage, SnapServer SAN Solutions to the REO VTL Virtual Tape Library Solutions.
 
In addition, the base of active FastTrack users grew 10x to over 4,000, driven by benefits including margin protection through deal registration, specialized on-demand training and customizable sales support tools offered to partners.

Overland's FastTrack program gives channel partners access to Overland marketing programs, personalized offline and online resources, as well as an integrated deal registration program that provides margin protection for specific end-user opportunities.

 

Overland's FastTrack program gives channel partners access to Overland marketing programs, personalized offline and online resources, as well as an integrated deal registration program that provides margin protection for specific end-user opportunities.

Additional benefits include:

• Business development funds for lead generation and brand awareness
• Quarterly partner and end-user promotions
• Dedicated field sales, field engineering and inside sales resources

Survey of Overland Storage Channel Partners
Overland Storage also announced the results of a worldwide survey of its sales partners, VARs and solution providers that demonstrates the success of the company's FastTrack Partner Program, as well as the protected margins and promotions to generate sales.

The results of the survey indicate:

• 95% of FastTrack partners say that Overland protected margins are comparable to or better than competitor offerings
• 91% of FastTrack partners report that Overland's partner promotions and protected margins help them sell more
• 89% of FastTrack partners sell Overland Storage because the company distributes its products through the channel only, resulting in significant channel engagement opportunities

"We recognize that VARs are looking to technology vendors for great products from partners they can trust," said Jillian Mansolf, vice president of global sales and marketing at Overland Storage. "The growth of our partners in 2011 and the results of our recent channel survey demonstrate that we are delivering exactly what our partners need to maximize their sales opportunities and profits."

Western Digital (WD): Fiscal 2Q12 Financial Results and Thailand Impact

HDD shipped down 51% sequentially, average selling price up 50%

(in US$ millions)	2Q11	2Q12	6 mo. 11	6 mo. 12
Revenues	2,475	1,995	4,871	4,689
Growth		-19%		-4%
Net income (loss)	225	145	422	384

Western Digital Corp. reported revenue of $2.0 billion, hard-drive unit shipments of 28.5 million and net income of $145 million, or $0.61 per share, for its second fiscal quarter ended Dec. 30, 2011.

Excluding charges and expenses related to the Thailand flooding and the planned acquisition of Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, non-GAAP net income was $358 million, or $1.51 per share.

During the quarter, the company incurred charges and expenses of $199 million related to the flooding and expenses of $14 million associated with the planned acquisition of HGST.

In the year-ago quarter, the company reported revenue of $2.5 billion, net income of $225 million, or $0.96 per share, and shipped 52.2 million hard drives.

The company generated $378 million in cash from operations during the December quarter, ending with total cash and cash equivalents of $3.9 billion.

Non-GAAP net income for the second quarter fiscal 2012 consists of GAAP net income of $145 million plus $199 million for charges and expenses related to the flooding and $14 million of acquisition-related expenses. Non-GAAP earnings per share of $1.51 for the second quarter is calculated by using the same 237 million diluted shares as is used for GAAP earnings per share.

Operations Update
The company also announced it has made significant additional progress to restore its manufacturing capacity following the recent flooding in Thailand. It has continued to ramp HDD production in Thailand and yesterday resumed slider production which had been suspended since October 10. The company now believes its manufacturing capacity will be back to pre-flood capabilities in the quarter ending September 2012.

" We have made substantial progress in restoring WD's manufacturing capabilities in the aftermath of the historic flooding in Thailand, and this is reflected in our second quarter financial results and in the resumption of our operations there," said John Coyne, president and chief executive officer. "While much work remains to be done over the next several quarters to reach our pre-flood manufacturing capabilities, the progress thus far is significantly ahead of our original expectations and is a tribute to the dedicated and effective actions of our employees, contractors and Thai government agencies, the efforts of our supply partners and the support of our customers. We are grateful to all involved in this extraordinary effort."

HGST Acquisition
The company's plan to complete the acquisition of HGST is on track to close by March 2012. The company continues to work on obtaining the regulatory approval of the transaction from the remaining government agencies. 

Abstracts of the earnings call transcript:

John Coyne, president and CEO:
"We believe industry shipments in the December quarter were about 119 million units, which included approximately 11 million units of pre-flood inventory. Today, one quarter after the floods hit and despite the industry's heroic recovery efforts, supply remains significantly constrained. We believe this condition will persist throughout calendar 2012 with gradual improvement during the year, with industry production in the June quarter approaching pre-flood quarterly build levels.
"However, with the expected uptick in demand in the back half of the year, rollover demand from the current shortages and inventories throughout the supply chain at record lows, from component supply through HDD and system manufacturing and distribution and retail channels, we believe the pipeline will not be refilled to normal levels until the first half of calendar 2013.
"On November 18, 2011, an arbitration award of $525 million was rendered against WD. Earlier today, the arbitrator awarded prejudgment interest in the amount of $105 million. WD will promptly file a petition to vacate the award on the grounds that the arbitrator exceeded his authority and failed to consider relevant evidence. We anticipate that the court will hear our arguments on our petition in March or April of 2012, and issue a decision sometime thereafter.
"So we think that while there will be a gradual reduction of the pricing that's being driven by the imbalance between supply and demand in a stabilized situation where inventories have been rebuilt throughout the chain to normal levels, which we anticipate will be in the first half of 2013 calendar year. That when prices stabilize in that environment, we expect they will be at a higher level than pre-flood due to the incremental costs that I just outlined."

COO, Tim Leyden, COO:
"We are enhancing our infrastructure by extending slider production capacity and capability into Malaysia in order to mitigate risk. We expect to have Malaysian sliders shipping in our HDDs in the June quarter.
"We are currently shipping 1 terabyte per platter of 3.5-inch and 500 gigabytes per platter of 2.5-inch drives in volume.
" (...) we have our 900-gigabyte 2.5-inch SAS product in qualification at multiple OEMs.
"In general, channels with shorter inventory pipelines are getting higher and more immediate product allocations, while channels with longer inventory pipelines are expected to deplete available inventory before receiving further product allocation.
" (...) we are targeting throughput to approach 60%, 80% and 100% of pre-flood production volumes in the March, June and September quarters, respectively.
"Average selling price was approximately $69 per unit, up $22 from the year ago quarter and up $23 from the September quarter. There were two customers, which each comprised 10% or more of our total revenue: Acer and Dell.
"OEM sales represented 59% of revenue, up from 45% in the prior year and 53% in the September quarter. Distribution channel sales represented 25% of revenue, down from 33% in the prior year and 29% in the September quarter. Retail sales as a percent of revenue were 16%, down from prior year's 22% and September's 18%.
"Revenue from sales of our branded products was $328 million, down 40% from the year ago quarter and 33% from the September quarter.
"Our gross margin for the quarter was 32.5%, up from 19.2% in the year ago quarter and 20.1% in the September quarter."

WD Shares Up on Fee Waiver for Thai Operations

Shares of Irvine-based disk drive maker Western Digital Corp. rose Tuesday after the Thai government said it would waive import fees on some products to help companies in the region affected by widespread flooding and related damage.

Investors sent Western Digital shares up 4.4% in early afternoon New York trading to a market value of about $6.5 billion on word of the assistance.

The measure was announced Tuesday by Thailand Deputy Prime Minister and Commerce Minister Kittiratt Na-Ranong. It includes waving import duties for some machinery, spare parts and finished goods through next June.

Western Digital was forced to close its production plants in Thailand, and will likely lose its title as the world’s largest disk drive maker this quarter.

Its flooded buildings in Thailand house assembly and testing operations along with a “substantial majority” of the company’s slider fabrication operations, which account for a key component in disk drives, Chief Operating Officer Tim Leyden said in the recent conference call.

Western Digital is working to shift some of those operations to its facility in Malaysia.

Its recent guidance on the current quarter shed some light on a grim situation in Thailand, which is struggling with flooding caused by a heavier-than-usual monsoon season punctuated by typhoons.

Executives said Western Digital expects to ship between 22 million and 26 million hard drives in the December quarter, down nearly 59% from the prior period.

The company has held the market share lead over Scotts Valley-based rival Seagate Technologies LLC for nearly two years. It could slip to No. 3 or No. 4 worldwide, according to El Segundo-based market tracker iSuppli Corp., a unit of IHS Inc.

Thailand is the world’s second-largest producer of disk drives behind China and a major supplier of hard drive components.

Western Digital ships about 60% of its disk drives from Thailand, where it employs some 37,000 people.

Imation Introduces Scalable Storage Platform for SMBs - InfiniVault, RDX, A8, LTO Ultrium

Imation Corp. unveiled a scalable storage portfolio of data protection and data archive products designed to help data-intensive, compliance-driven SMBs retain, retrieve and recover valuable data.

"Many SMBs feel trapped between a rock and a hard place with unstructured data storage and compliance requirements that are too sophisticated for off-the-shelf storage products, yet SMBs can't justify the cost and complexity of enterprise class solutions," said Ian Williams, vice president, global marketing and product management, Imation. "We've solved that problem by delivering a suite of tiered storage products right-sized for today's data-intensive SMBs. Backed by Imation's global reach, strong channel relationships and data storage experience spanning nearly 60 years, our new scalable storage solutions help SMBs cost-effectively embrace the rapidly expanding digital world, yet frees them up to run a productive business."

Imation's scalable storage platform features new Imation InfiniVault and Imation DataGuard multi-tiered data-archive and data-protection appliances, as well as the company's existing Imation RDX removable hard disk storage and LTO technologies. The portfolio provides compliant solutions for SMBs to better retain, retrieve and recover their data.

"Compliance and the explosion of unstructured data have changed the way SMBs must retain, retrieve and recover their data. For years, SMBs have pieced together solutions from different storage companies which didn't always work well together, Imation is offering a seamlessly integrated portfolio of tiered and flexible storage solutions geared to the needs of SMBs. These solutions include cloud-enabling storage capabilities as well as archive quality media and appliances designed to enable SMBs to efficiently scale their storage according to their data archive and data protection needs."

The launch of Imation's tiered storage platform with data archive and data protection products for SMBs is another step in Imation's strategy to grow in the secure and scalable storage markets. Already in data storage, the company is making technology investments to extend its position in data storage, security, archiving and protection, including the 2011 acquisitions of MXI Security, IronKey's secure hardware business and the assets of ProStor Systems, including the InfiniVault product line.

About Imation's Scalable Storage Portfolio
The Imation InfiniVault data-archive appliance provides SMBs a storage option for managing unstructured data, helps meet data retention requirements and utilizes hard drives, RDX drives and the cloud to deliver elastic vaults of online, nearline and offline storage. The Imation line includes four models - including the Imation InfiniVault 5, 35, 70 and DICOM - to meet size and industry requirements. Imation InfiniVault data-archive appliances are available in the U.S. through authorized Imation resellers and dealers.

The Imation DataGuard data-protection appliance is a disaster-tolerant backup appliance using hard drives and RDX drives to provide a multi-layer data protection target within existing backup infrastructures. Designed as both tower and rack models, DataGuard uses RDX removable hard drives to retain backups and to seed the cloud infrastructure. Models include the Imation DataGuard T5R, R4 and the R16, and will be available through authorized Imation resellers and dealers in early 2012.

Purpose built to mitigate data loss, retain long-term data and support removable media workflows, Imation's line of stand alone and internal mounted RDX hardware combines the best of tape backup with hard disk drive storage and delivers removability, portability reliability, faster transfer rates and file retrieval. Currently available through authorized Imation resellers and dealers, models include the RDX A8 Storage Array and RDX USB 2.0 and 3.0 Internal and External Docks.

Imation's LTO Hardware is available as a single tape drive system or multiple drive library systems in either rack mount or standalone configurations. Models include the LTO-4 and LTO-5 HH SAS Tape Drives, and L1200 LTO 2U and L1400 LTO 4U Tape Libraries. Imation's LTO Hardware products will be available through authorized Imation resellers and dealers in November 2011.
 

Overland Storage NEO 8000e Wins "Made in the USA" Golden Bridge Award

Overland Storage has received the prestigious "Made in the USA" Golden Bridge Award for its commitment to 100% US-based manufacturing of its NEO 8000e enterprise tape library. The coveted annual Golden Bridge Awards program encompasses the world's best in organizational products, performance and services as well as executives and management teams from every major industry. Public, private, for-profit and non-profit organizations from all over the world were eligible to submit nominations. 

In order to qualify for the "Made in the USA" category, products must have been completely manufactured in the USA and could not contain any foreign content. With its primary manufacturing location based in San Diego, California, Overland Storage is one of the only storage companies in the industry that currently manufactures products in the USA. Overland Storage is committed to US-based manufacturing; in fact, all Overland Storage tape libraries are 100% produced and manufactured in the US, including the NEO 8000e. 

"Maintaining US-based operations is extremely important for Overland Storage and being named a winner of the Golden Bridge Awards for the 'Made in the USA' category highlights our continued dedication to domestic production," said Eric Kelly, CEO, Overland Storage. "The manufacturing sector of the US economy has experienced a decline in recent years, yet we remain committed to reinvesting and supporting the American economy by fostering domestic production, and we are proud that our tape products are manufactured in the US." 

The NEO 8000e is the next generation LTO-5 tape library solution from Overland Storage that is specifically designed for large, data intensive businesses. Built on the patented, award-winning Overland Storage NEO architecture, the NEO 8000e effortlessly expands to meet changing data storage needs and provides high data availability, redundancy and serviceability. With storage capacity of up to 3PB and rapid data transfer rates of up to 24TB/hour, the NEO 8000e delivers enterprise class data protection at a price typically associated with midrange solutions. 

More than forty judges from a broad spectrum of industry voices from around the world participated and the averages of their scores determined the 2011 Golden Bridge Business Awards winners. The winners were announced during the awards ceremony on August 10, 2011 in New York.

Overland Storage enhances product service and support offerings

Overland Storage, Inc. the trusted global provider of effortless data management and data protection solutions across the data lifecycle, today announced enhanced OverlandCare service offerings for the company’s entire line of SnapServer NAS, SnapSAN, NEO Series tape products and REO Series VTL solutions. Featuring new onsite service and installation options, round-the-clock phone access to solution experts, as well as proof of concept and architectural design offerings, the expanded OverlandCare program strengthens the company’s ability to provide comprehensive technical assistance on a global scale. The enterprise-class components and flexibility of the tiered offering also empower Overland channel partners to easily customize and sell complete service and support solutions to meet customers’ specific needs.

 

Overland’s new centralized global solution call center integrates with its regional solution call center infrastructure across all of the company’s product lines. This network of solution centers provides a framework of support and services designed to enable customers to spend less time managing their infrastructure and focus more on technology innovation to grow their business.

 

Key Benefits of OverlandCare

• Significant investment by Overland Storage in infrastructure and solution call center resources to ensure quick response and one-call resolution for customers
• 24x7x365 global call center technical support now available on all Overland Storage products
• Optional four-hour onsite support now available worldwide on all SnapServer NAS, SnapSAN, NEO Series Tape and REO Series VTL products
• Onsite installation services and support for the entire Overland Storage line of data backup and data protection products
• Proof of concept and architectural design services available for the deployment of complex solutions within customers infrastructure
• Warranty certification delivery system, featuring automatic electronic distribution of warranty certificates and entitlement validation
• Secure service portal, including online product registration and access to services-related information such as the ability to track and log service calls in real time

“Strengthening our services offerings for all Overland Storage products worldwide is an important component of our commitment to making enterprise-class support and services available to companies of all sizes,” said Eric Kelly, CEO of Overland Storage. “Even as the amount of data constantly grows, we believe that the technology to store, manage and protect that data should be easy to buy, easy to deploy and easy to maintain so that companies can focus on their primary business activities. Our enhanced OverlandCare offerings further our ongoing commitment to deliver effortless data protection and data management solutions to the market.”

MOBOTIX CCTV and Overland Storage SnapServer solution stops thefts and vandalism at Saxon church

There are many items of interest in the church including an ancient stone font with a medieval carved wooden cover, six 14th century misericords, a carved reredos dating from 1890, a Victorian organ and a number of stained glass windows. Following a systematic campaign of metal thefts from the church, Paul Drakes, the Churchwarden at St. Nicholas Church felt he had to act: “We had considered CCTV for a while but the property is a grade-one listed building and over a thousand years old, so we needed to be sensitive to the heritage of the site.”

The parish of St. Nicholas, one of the UK’s oldest churches, deployed CCTV technology from MOBOTIX to protect against theft and vandalism while offering access to special services via the internet.

Paul setup a CCTV solution that provides a complete perimeter and internal view of the two acre site with just six cameras. Four of the MOBOTIX DualDome-D12 cameras cover the external perimeter of the building and just two cover the entire interior. This coverage with such a low camera count was achievable because the image quality of the MOBOTIX camera is so good that it can cover a large area whilst retaining good definition.

The system records 30 days worth of footage on an Overland Storage 2TByte SNAP server (snapserver) and is also linked via a BT broadband connection. The MOBOTIX cameras can automatically telephone a range of preset telephone numbers in the event of movement in and around the church, especially late at night when previous incidents have occurred. Recipients of a phone alert can easily and securely log-in via any internet connected PC or mobile device to view footage from any camera in real-time. “This allows us to quickly and safely assess the situation and take the appropriate measures,” explains Paul.

Since the installation of the CCTV, which Paul believes is the first of its kind in the UK to both protect and deliver church services via the internet; there have been no thefts or incidents of vandalism on the site. “Our congregation have taken to it and we are now planning to open the church over a longer period with visitors able to look around or contact us via a telephone with CCTV helping to provide a level of protection when the church is unmanned.”