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Seagate buying Xyratex is the latest competitive threat and the firm is said to be retrenching its core HPC business. DDN denies this and, coincidentally, has recently hired itself a chief marketing officer for the first time, one Molly Rector. DataDirect Networks is a substantial - staff - storage startup which makes and sells high-performance storage arrays for the supercomputing, high-performance computing HPC , object storage and big data enterprise markets.
What we have heard from an experienced storage source in Silicon Valley is that troubles are mounting at DDN and it is finding it hard to be profitable in the face of competition from significantly larger companies, such as NetApp with its E-Series Engenio storage arrays.
Our source says that DDN has already had two layoff rounds and another may be imminent, with likely presentation as getting rid of poor performers. Now they have fallen back to Adopter member status and are no longer on the board.
This, we hear, reduced their annual dues by around 90 per cent. Bloch's business networking profile says he was a DDN president from to March It looks as if, after a brief interruption, he's back as president again. Revenues in were boosted by a really large web customer who bought less from them in It was the largest revenue year in DDN's history.
The company's revenue growth curve appears to be saw-tooth in shape with being an upward line and a downward one. What will happen this year? We can easily imagine that Bouzari and Bloch will want it to swing back up. Jeff Denworth, recognised as a highly intelligent communicator with an ability to present situations positively, is now leaving DDN entirely amicably we should stress and Molly Rector is becoming DDN's chief marketing officer CMO: The last major marketing initiative at SpectraLogic involved Black Pearl appliances and a way of storing objects on tape, giving Rector object experience.
Bouzari was quoted in the release about her appointment: What strikes us as curious here are two things. Generally board members are people who have moved on from executive management positions. Generally, again, senior executive positions are filled by recruiting executives already doing the job in another company or up-and-comers, not the mature ex-execs who are given another crack at the whip. One possibility is that the two were put in place to hold the fort while attempts were made to sell DDN, possibly to Cray, but this is just a possibility — and, of course, no one at DDN will give such an idea presented by us any credence at all.
Another possibility was that an IPO was being prepared, the revenue fall made it a struggle and it was eventually canned but, again, DDN wouldn't be expected to talk about such a thing with us. But management team members have left and Bloch has had to return, we hear, to help save the company.
That's one possible way to look at it. Bouzari is CEO and chairman and Bloch is a director and president. They started the company in and, fifteen years later, are still actively running it. He was also a co-founder and board member of Whamcloud. DDN is Bouzari and Bloch's baby, their very own toy. They will not, and need not, relinquish control and there is nobody around who can tell them to.
DDN has no people on its board with equal or larger stockholdings than them who can suggest and advise different courses of action — at least, not with any authority. It is effectively a closed shop run by two seasoned, experienced, hands-on and clearly self-sufficient founders who are not ready to move on. They have done great things with DDN, expect great things from their staff, and more great things are possible, but This is normality in the storage technology business. The chances are DDN will grow through it, perhaps with another cut-back or two and perhaps with some more management changes; the founders want a lot from their execs.
That seems to be Bouzari's and Bloch's way of doing things. It's worked for them in the past and, unless there are big problems we don't know about, there's no reason to suppose that it won't work for them in another run round the block.
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