History (1992): Profile of Cygnet

According to Jeffrey W. Dunn, VP, sales and customer support of Cygnet Systems (San Jose, CA), its company has installed up to November 1991, a total of 750 12-inch optical WORM disk jukeboxes, with 150 to 160 in 1991 and forecasts 250 for 1992.

Sales of 5.25-inch optical disk jukeboxes were less successful, with only about 100 sold in 1991, representing 2% of Cygnet’s revenues.

The only OEM contract known here is with Siemens.

There are few other 12-inch disk jukebox manufacturers in the world, they are US companies like Eastman Kodak, FileNet and Japanese ones like Hitachi and Sony, but they’re not close to have the same amount of customers as Cygnet.

Dunn talks about Bull, DEC, IBM, Philips, NCR, Wang Laboratories, AT & T, ICL, Comparex, Memorex, Toshiba for jukeboxes with 12-inch WORM disk drives from ATG, LMS, Hitachi or Toshiba depending on the case.

IBM announced its intention of giving up 12-inch optical disks for 5.25-inch media in May 1991. But Dunn believes that Big Blue needs 12-inch drives for high end capacity users.

FileNet remains IBM’s supplier for its mainframe computers.

For the ImagePlus AS/400 version, Cygnet announced last September the availability in the US of a 12-inch jukebox with an LMS drive and services from Xerox Corp., to provide up to 4TB of optical storage.

The storaqe products are not directly marketed by IBM, but the company has developed and plans to provide an RPO hardware and PRPQ software attachment capability in mid-92.

Last October, the Californian company had announced that their series 1800 jukebox family, now featuring SCSI-2 interface, will support the ATG Gigadisc GD-9001 drive based on a 9GB 12-inch optical disk, to reach a total on-line storage capacity of 1.27TB.

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer storage Newsletter on issue ≠48, published on January 1992.

Note: ATG bought Cygnet out of bankruptcy for $7 million in 1993 and has been reorganized as ATG Cygnet Inc. after being merged with ATG Gigadisc Inc. On its side, ATG Cygnet filed for bankruptcy in 1996.