Tape library specialist Overland Data Inc has announced an OEM deal with Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG which will see the Paderborn, Germany-based firm bundling Overland’s Digital Linear Tape7000 based LibraryXpress technology with its WinNT and Unix server lines. The deal is a welcome boost as the 17 year-old San Diego, California-based firm seeks to expand its worldwide operations. Overland president and chief executive officer Scott McClendon says the company’s international market currently accounts for 25% to 30% of the total $47m business but may account for up to 50% in three years. But he’s worried about profile. We’re looking to get more feet in the street visibility. We need to get ourselves known. OEM sales account for around 45% of the company’s business in Europe and 35% worldwide. A March flotation helped raise much needed funds to sink into working capital but McClendon says some of the cash may now be used for acquisitions: There’s nothing on the table as yet but we’d like to acquire rights to technologies to integrate into our research and development work. While the company is keen to stress its investment in research and development spending and commitment to develop new products, McClendon concedes the business is still dependent on established legacy markets. European sales manager John Boyken smiles at the irony of its deal in January to supply IBM Corp with its 3490E class tape products (CI No 3,073). McClendon says: They’re truly legacy markets and they’re dying a bit every year but they’re still cash cows and we’re going to milk them. Apparently the company’s 18 and 36 track IBM standard drives together with the 9 track range make up 50% of the its business with the new digital linear tape LibraryXpress product accounting for all the rest. For the future, Overland is currently working on driver support for Windows NT 5.0 and says it expects to make a number of announcements about further moves into the NT market soon. McClendon observes: It’s amazing how the pendulum swings back; now we’ve got distributed access but we’re moving back to centralized data control. The move to NT is really feeding demand in the storage market, he said
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