History 2002: Microsoft Star Beluzzo Now CEO of Quantum

Rick Belluzzo replaced Mike Brown as CEO of Quantum as of September 3.

Brown, who will stay on as chairman, never copped much of a star attitude, and perhaps that was the problem. He didn’t quite have the aura of a Mike Cannon, or the approachability of a Matt Massengill, the CEOs of Maxtor and Western Digital, respectively.

He has been with Quantum for 18 years, CEO for the last 7, replacing Bill Miller in 1995. He was responsible for the acquisition of Digital’s storage business, particularly the DLT activity, which he shepherded to the heights of mid-range tape offerings. He also oversaw the sale of Quantum’s HDD division to Maxtor, as well as the company’s diversification into tape libraries and storage subsystems (NAS, D2D backup units and related software).

But the company has been lagging lately, with overall sales declining for the past 2 years and the most recent quarter hitting the depths ($211.5 million), not to mention weak profitability.

No doubt the company needed new blood, if not young blood (Brown is only 43, his replacement 48). As for Belluzzo, there’s no question the former president and COO of Microsoft has the necessary star quality, with previous experience as chairman and CEO of Silicon Graphics.

What’s less clear is what attracted an executive of his standing to jump to a company with only 2,000 or so employees. Even more surprising is his acceptance of an annual salary of $600,000 (not including options to buy roughly 2 million Quantum shares), according to the Wall Street Journal, considering that Microsoft had just forgiven him a $15 million loan when he resigned last May.

Scanning Belluzzo’s resume, there’s hardly any indication of special expertise in the storage field, other than a stint heading up HP’s computer systems and storage products division.

Nevertheless, Quantum needs a new type of leadership, with more experience in software, not to mention a privileged relationship with Microsoft that may prove quite useful.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 176 on September 2002 from the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter.

Note: After leaving Quantum, Belluzzo began working with Italian start-ups in both the US and Italy, becoming an investor in several companies. In 2017 he became a partner at VC firm Innogest Capital.