History (1999): Jim Porter and Ray Freeman to Retire

No more Disk/Trend reports, no more Freeman Reports signed by Ray Freeman after the end of the year, no more Data Storage Forum, no more incisive comments from Jim Porter or Freeman on the latest developments in the industry.

If we had to list the half-dozen or so most influential people in the disk drive industry on the one hand, the tape industry on the other one, Porter and Freeman, respectively, would have not trouble making the grade. Between the two of them, they split the consulting and analysis market for storage products – even if, in the meantime, some competition has appeared – Jim for hard and floppy disks, Ray for tape and libraries, competing with each other only for optical drives.

James N. Porter was product manager for computer tape and disk drives at Memorex before founding Disk/Trend in 1977. He reports that he will now do some consulting and concentrate on researching the history of the disk drive for 2 books he is writing.

Before founding Freeman Associates, also in 1977, Ray C. Freeman, Jr., with an electric engineering degree from Princeton University, held executive posts at Honeywell, ISS/Sperry Univac, Applied Magnetics and General Electric.

Bob Abraham, VP of the company, will take over Freeman Reports, continuing to publish under his own name.

Freeman was deeply involved in QIC standards and also served as chairman of the DDS Forum.

Freeman Associates will continue to operate OSTA.

The most recent edition of the DataStorage Forum, held last month in San Jose, CA, was the 18th, and final one.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 141 on October 1999 from the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter.