Louisville, Colorado-based Storage Technology Corp, which has been cutting back on many of its peripheral activities over the past few years, is diversifying again, this time into networking and high-speed data transfer channels. It has agreement to acquire a company even more venerable than itself, Network Systems Corp of Minneapolis, the third of the big companies spawned by the old Univac operation in Minnesota, the other two being Control Data Corp and Cray Research Inc. StorageTek is proposing to pay 0.2618 of a share for each Network Systems out, valuing the company at an indicated $300m. StorageTek chief Ryal Poppa says the networking and product-development capabilities of the target will enable it to accelerate its plans to become the leader in storage management for enterprise-wide networks, with switching that can consolidate speech, data, image and video traffic. Network Systems brings with it two acquisitions of its own, Bytex Corp, Westborough, and Bus-Tech Inc, Burlington, both Massachusetts. Network Systems will add about $250m of profitable volume to StorageTek’s annual turnover of $1,000m or so.
