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's top tech guy: Great things ahead

Barrall talks tape

We had the chance to talk to Geoff Barrall, the founder of BlueArc and Data Robotics, about his work at Overland Storage, where he is charge of product engineering.

He came into Overland after having been his own boss for two decades but "realised that the challenges are very similar and found my feet". CEO Eric Kelly and sales and marketing VP Jillian Mansolf are great to work with, and "I have the right team in place (including some of my old friends from BlueArc and Data Robotics) and everybody is working really well together".

He couldn't discuss the product roadmap in any specific terms at all, but he did say "it's the most exciting I've ever had", and discussed it in a little more detail.

"On the SNAP Server side of the business it's public knowledge that we acquired the Maxiscale scale-out file system which we're excited to integrate and deliver.

Tape market large and growing

"As for tape it's really exciting for me to be working in that area. My Phd is in Cybernetics and so the fact that I'm actually responsible for delivering robotics for a living now ties right back to that. The tape market is large and growing but Overland has work to do to regain its former share.

"Fortunately very little innovation has been applied to this market for some time (by any vendor) and so it's a great area to be creative and I have one of the few teams remaining in the world with the skills to create the necessary technology."

There's a surprise. Tape product engineering developments haven't been switched off. HP, IBM, Quantum, SpectraLogic and other tape product suppliers can look forward to some interesting competition.

"We also introduced two SAN products," said Barrall. "These seem to be doing well and it's exciting to have a product portfolio to work with that spans NAS, SAN, Archive Disk and Tape. Lots of room for synergy there.

Should people be concerned out the length of time it's taking to produce products from his engineering department? "Anybody who knows engineering will know that it take around 18 months to deliver something new and around 24 for something great. I'm working on that kind of time frame and am very excited about 2011 and beyond."

Qualstar: Fiscal 4Q10 Financial Results - Tape library revenues at $2.3 million, comparable to the prior year quarter

Qualstar Corporation reported financial results for the fourth quarter and full year of fiscal 2010 ended June 30, 2010.

Fiscal 2010 fourth quarter financial results revenues for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2010 were $4.0 million, compared to $3.8 million for the same quarter of fiscal 2009, an increase of $0.2 million or 5.9 percent. Loss from operations was $627,000 compared to $1.4 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2009. Net loss was $575,000 or $(0.05) per basic and diluted share, compared to a net loss of $1.2 million, or $(0.10) per basic and diluted share for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2009.

Tape library segment revenues were $2.3 million for the fourth quarter , comparable to the prior year quarter. Power supply segment revenues were $1.7 million for the quarter, compared to $1.4 million in the prior year quarter, an increase of $0.3 million, or 20.9 percent.

Gross profit increased to $1.28 million, or 32.1 percent of net revenues, for the three months ended June 30, 2010, from $941,000, or 25.0 percent of net revenues, for the three months ended June 30, 2009. The increase in gross profit is attributed to a change in product mix and a decrease in reserves.

Research and development expenses for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2010 were $749,000, or 18.8 percent of revenues, compared to $939,000 or 24.9 percent of revenues, for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2009. The change is due primarily to decreases in R&D material, consultants and compensation related to headcount reductions. Sales and marketing expenses were $528,000, or 13.2 percent of revenues, compared to $640,000 or 17.0 percent of revenues, in the corresponding period last year. The change in sales and marketing expense was due to decreases in advertising and promotion expenses. General and administrative expenses in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2010 were $631,000 or 15.8 percent of revenues, compared to $745,000, or 19.8 percent of revenues, for the same period last year. The change in general and administrative expense was primarily due to decreases in accounting and audit and compensation related to headcount reductions.

Commenting on the Company's business results, Bill Gervais, president and chief executive of Qualstar said: " Consolidated fourth quarter revenues of $4.0 million increased 5.9 percent compared to the fourth quarter last year driven by the continued growth in sales of our XLS enterprise class product line and our N2Power business. In fact, the XLS product line generated strong momentum throughout fiscal 2010 with sales increasing nearly 64 percent for the full year. XLS libraries appeal to a diverse array of end users as the flexibility of our solution allows customers to easily expand their data storage capacity as requirements increase over time. N2Power's full year revenues increased to a record $5.8 million and our products continue to generate strong demand due to worldwide requirements for smaller and more energy efficient power supplies."

Mr. Gervais continued: " Looking ahead, we hope that improving customer demand combined with new product development initiatives will result in a positive impact in fiscal 2011."

For fiscal 2010 full year, Qualstar reported revenues of $15.3 million in fiscal 2010, compared with $17.9 million in fiscal 2009. The Company's net loss in fiscal 2010 was $3.1 million or $(0.25) per basic and diluted share, compared with a net loss in fiscal 2009 of $2.6 million, or $(0.21) per basic and diluted share.

Cash , cash equivalents and marketable securities were $24.3 million at June 30, 2010, down from $27.7 million at June 30, 2009. Inventory, net of reserves, at June 30, 2010 was $4.8 million, compared to $5.8 million at June 30, 2009.