History 2001: Alanco from Gold Mining to Storage

“Honey, I shrunk the company.” So went the opening line, highly significant, delivered by chairman and CEO Robert Kauffman in an address to his shareholders last October 12. Kauffman’s firm, Alanco Technologies (formerly Alanco Environmental Resources), a sort of holding company listed on the Nasdaq, decided 2 years ago to transform itself, giving up all its business activities – which ran a diverse range from gold mining to food services equipment – liquidating them entirely in order to reinvest its money in computer storage.

The made-over firm’s first acquisition: Arraid in October 99, followed more recently by Excel/Meridian Data. [Oddly enough, another gold mining company, Bolivar Goldfields Ltd., recently acquired SSP venture, Storage@ccess formerly Champion Computers of Boca Raton, FL, as part of its effort to reinvent itself in the storage industry. Bolivar’s shareholders voted to change the firm’s name to Storage@ccess Technologies. -Ed.]

With Arraid, Alanco acquires a solid technological base. The storage company was founded in 1993, in Phoenix, AZ, by John Dahl and Frank Meijers in order to focus on drive emulation products. Contrary to the general wisdom, there are still computer systems out there, and flight simulators in particular, which have been programmed to operate with HDDs in real-time but not intelligent venerable SMD interface.

The company has sold nearly 4,000 units throughout the world, and we’re talking about devices that run an average $5,000.

Arraid then designed a version with emulators in order to move from 9-track tapes to random access storage of the Jaz, Zip or magneto-optical drive variety. Its emulator board set can also be found in French firm Pertec’s products.

The company’s name, Arraid, would suggest that the enterprise was involved in RAID technology. In fact, due to a lack of funds, that particular endeavor never got off the ground. Three years ago, however, the firm decided to expand into SANs, recognizing that the emulator market was losing steam. Subsequently, the company was split in 2, with Arraid on one side, led by John Dahl, SanOne on the other, headed by Mike Flannery, both with offices in the same Phoenix HQs.

Development of a SAN required fresh funds – Enter Alanco, in 1999.

Start-up SanOne is in fact more of a SAN integrator, using modules from various sources (Hitachi, Exabyte, Gadzoox, Legato, Crossroads, McData).

Alanco is now also involved in NAS systems for CD and DVD, since its acquisition last June of Excel/Meridian of Dallas, TX [Meridian Data was originally acquired by Quantum, which sold off part of the business to Excel].

The end result is that Alanco, which sought to become a major player in the storage industry, is now at the head of a small group of companies that are just as interested in NAS and SAN solutions as in their root technology of storage peripherals.

According to figures provided by Frank Meijers, a Netherlands native who is now VP international marketing and sales at Alanco, the latter, which now bills itself a storage networking company, boasts some 60 people, including 20 at Arraid alone.

“In one year,” Meijers reported, “our objective is to attain $15 million in sales for SanOne, $7 million for Excel/Meridian and $2 to $3 million for Arraid.”

For its last quarter closed at the end of December, Alanco’s revenues were $2.56 million, for a net loss of $606,200.

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