History 2001: KLA-Tencor Signs for Phase Metrics

$2 billion-firm KLA-Tencor has signed a definitive agreement to purchase Phase Metrics for an undisclosed sum.

Phase Metrics’ inspection/certification tools for the storage industry will be combined with KLA-Tencor’s existing data storage metrology and inspection solutions.

The new combined storage division will be located in Phase Metrics’ current facilities in San Diego, Fremont and Hayward, CA. The GM will be Frank Brienzo, currently VP of business operations and chief manufacturing officer at KLA-Tencor.

Founded in 1989, Phase Metrics merged in 1995 with 2 other disk drive testers, ProQuip and Cambrian Systems.

The company has an installed base of 4,200 testers, certain of which are used to test and verify heads and disks, others of which are servowriters used by HDD assembly plants.

Phase Metrics, whose annual sales are somewhere between $50 and $100 million, with a workforce of 400 people, according to business.com, has sales and support facilities in USA, Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 160 on May 2001 from the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter.