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Features - Financial Plays Of The Week:

QUANTUM REORGANIZES TO CREATE STRONGER OPERATIONAL PLATFORM

Quantum Corp, a global leader in data storage, announced that it is reorganizing to create a stronger operational platform for profit and growth and leverage synergies across the company. Quantum's two business groups, the DLTtape Group (DLTG) and the Storage Solutions Group (SSG), are being integrated into one organization with a consolidated operations function and three business units -- Storage Devices, Media and Storage Systems. The company will also combine the DLTG and SSG sales organizations into one OEM sales force and one Quantum-branded sales force. Rick Belluzzo will continue in his role as chairman and CEO, and John Gannon, who has been president of DLTG, will assume the position of president and COO for the company.

"Over the past year, we've made progress in a number of areas, including gaining market share, increasing our tape drive revenue and gross margins, growing our automation revenues and reducing operating expenses," said Belluzzo. "The changes announced today will enable us to build on this progress by combining our strengths across Quantum to serve customers even better, further reduce costs and provide greater opportunities for growth."

By integrating the two separate business groups, Quantum will eliminate duplicative functions and make it easier for customers, suppliers and other partners to do business with the company. Customers, in particular, will be able to leverage Quantum's full range of products -- from the entry-level DLT VS80 tape drive to the new enterprise-level "MAKO" PX720 tape library -- as well as its expertise, technology, services and support, from a single dedicated Quantum team that understands all their backup, archive and recovery needs. With one operational platform for Quantum's tape drives, tape media, tape libraries and disk-based backup systems, customers will benefit from improved cost efficiencies, product integration and time-to-market. At the same time, as an industry leader in data protection committed to meeting end-user needs, Quantum will continue to work closely with its automation partners in delivering DLTtape-based solutions and continue to provide multiple tape drive formats in the company's broad range of tape libraries.

"Our strategy remains the same -- to deliver highly reliable backup, archiving and recovery solutions that meet demanding requirements for data integrity and availability with superior price performance," said Belluzzo.

As a result of the organizational changes, Quantum will reduce its workforce by approximately 110 employee and 20 contractor positions, through the elimination of duplicative jobs and other streamlining. In addition, Larry Orecklin -- who has been president of the Storage Solutions Group -- has chosen to leave the company to pursue other opportunities.

The company expects to incur restructuring charges related to the current reorganization, as well as previously discussed restructuring, of approximately $10 million to $15 million over the next several quarters, with the majority being taken in the current quarter.


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