History (1991): Profile of Wangtek

Each one of the 3 companies of the Rexon group has its own specialty in the magnetic tape and cartridge drive market.

Sytron produces software, Tecmar mounts subsystems and Wangtek, the main one, manufactures the drives.

Established in August 1982, Wangtek Inc. (Simi Valley, CAl is a subsidiary of the publicly-held Rexon Inc. (Manhattan Beach, CA), a holding company with four main subsidiaries: Wangtek, Tecmar Inc. (Solon, OH), Sytron (Westboro, MA) and Wangtek Puerto Rico.

When Rexon began it was Rexon Business Machines, specialized in minicomputers, but its assets were sold in March 1989, and its business was discontinued.

Wangtek was acquired in 1985, Tecmar in 1986 and Sytron in 1989, this last one for $13.3 million.

The Rexon group with 811 persons reported sales of $158.2 million in its FY90 ended September 30, compared with $146.8 million in the previous year, which means a 7.8% improvement. At the same time, net income dropped 16.4% from $9.8 to $8.2 million. The first 6 months of FY91 ended with $95.2 million sales and a pre-tax income of $6.7 million, compared with $76.2 and $4.9 million for the same period in the previous year.

Last year, the group set up Rexon Europe in Abington Science Park, near Oxford, England, which is the sales and marketing center for its 3 companies in Europe, Middle-East and Africa, and Rexon Services in Aldermaston, also in England, for sales products maintenance.

A specialty for each one
Each one of the three main subsidiaries of Rexon has its own specialty.

Sytron develops and markets software for file backup and archival applications for PCs, file servers and workstations. There are over 800,000 users of Sytos and Sytos Plus.

Tecmar is specialized in tape subsystems for PC, PS/2 and Apple environments, based on QIC, DAT and 8mm drives. It also has additional activities, like being IBM’s exclusive producer of sound, still frame and full motion video boards.

Small growth
The largest subsidiary is Wangtek that reported a small growth from 1989 to 1990 where its sales grew from $109 to $110 million.

“With 8% pre-tax profits in 1990,” says Tom Parkinson, EVP and director of Rexon.

This year should not be exceptional either when you consider its $57 million revenues in the first quarter, ended at the end of March, compared with $54 million in the same period of the previous year. These revenues come 60% from domestic sales and 40% from international sales. Among the events in Wangtek’s existence, let’s mention a suit vs. Cipher that resulted in a patent settlement in June 1988 that obliged Cipher to pay 3% royalties for 10 years on some drives.

Manufacturing in California and Puerto Rico
Wangtek’s 75,000 square foot HQ in Simi Valley houses corporate offices and domestic manufacturing operations. The firm also operates a 70,000 square foot manufacturing facility opened in May 1988 in Puerto Rico where the 5.25-inch QIC drives are produced. Manufacturing of DC 2000 minicartridges, which means the 3000 Series of QIC-40 and QIC-80, is subcontracted to a Taiwanese company named Digital Peripherals Corp.

QIC-1000 and QIC-1350
“We just recently passed in front of Archive with 32% of the market for QIC drives,” says Parkinson.

Wangtek’s main OEMs are AT&T, Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, NCR, Nokia and Olivetti.

“QIC-600, the business will continue in the next 5 to 6 years,” believes Parkinson.

For the highest capacity model, Wangtek has decided to simultaneously keep on producing drives in the QIC-1000 and QIC-1350 formats. The first one mostly because IBM wanted compatibility with smaller capacity QIC models.

Wangtek’s product is here the 1GB 5100 ES model, actually in production and that is offered at $750 in OEM quantities.

The QIC-1350 format units are part of the 9000 Series. The first model with a 1.35GB storage capacity is named 9130ES and will be priced at $1,265 in OEM quantities, they will be available as of September. It’s similar to Archive’s Viper 2750 who decided to discontinue QIC-1000 models.

Beginning December of this year, Wangtek will launch a 9200ES unit based on the 2GB QIC-2040 that will offer some new interesting specs: a soft load mechanism like the one used on VCRs, thin-film heads with overwrite, a data compression option, a throttle capability which permits to automatically adjust 3 different transfer rates (300, 450 and 600KB/s) but also the possibility of reaching 1.2MB/s to become a data exchange support between PCs and mainframes. This unit will reach 6GB in 1992 to become the 9650ES model. All these drives are or will have the Stac data compression system, in a software or hardware configuration, which means an average doubled capacity.

DAT with JVC
DAT sales activity is still small compared with QIC drives (see charts), but Wangtek’s projections show that DAT revenues will grow from 7 to 33% of its revenues from 1991 to 1994.

The Californian company sold 7,000 drives in 1990 and expects to double this amount this year. In this segment, its best customers are AT&T, Dell, NCR and Olivetti.

In 1988, Wangtek had signed a renewable 5-year agreement with JVC for the Japanese company to provide mechanisms to Wangtek that will own exclusive rights to sell DDS format drives.

On the other hand, JVC has DAT drives in its catalog, but in the Data-DAT format. JVC builds the mechanisms and the servo electronics, Wangtek does controller manufacturing, assembly and tests.

As of now the company is shipping its DAT units with 90-meter tape cartridges originated from Fuji or Maxell, meaning a 2GB capacity.

Starting June 1991, the prototype of the 5.25-inch half-height 6200C model will be available with the same chassis as the 6130HS, a 90-meter cartridge and the DDS-DC data compression system, the same as Hewlett-Packard’s one.

Wangtek has already announced a 3.5-inch drive named Model 7200, also utilizing the 90-meter cartridge and data compression with audio read compatibility. It offers the ability to custom configure the device via flash EEPROM technology, includes proprietary automatic head cleaner, an innovative servo tension-sensing arm that monitors and adjusts tape tension, an automatic track-following servo system, the use of direct drive motors. The 7200 is offered at $1,200 in OEM quantities. It costs $2,695 with the 6000 DL 8-cartridge autoloader that is manufactured by Dialog. The DAT loader will move to 5.25-inch full-height ANSI dimensions in 1992, with no external dimensions. In the future, Wangtek intends to offer 4GBs (without data compression) on its 5.25-inch drives and also plans to produce half-height 3.5-inch units.

Wangtek in optical disks?
Rexon has always focused on magnetic tapes but Tom Parkinson unveiled that a program was in progress on a 3.5-inch magneto-optical drive with the support of a Japanese company whose name was not mentioned but that could, once more, be JVC.

Wangtek’s distributors
Europe

• Austria: Agora Computerperipherie Vertriebs GmbH (Vienna)
• Belgium: Maxcom (Brussels)
• Denmark: Dansk Periferi Teknik AJS (Soborg)
• Finland: Oy Atomica AB (Espoo), TT-Microtrading (Espoo)
• France: Omnilogic (Paris)
• Greece: Offitech SA (Piraeus)
• Israel: Teledisk Ltd. (Givataim)
• Italy: Data Peripheral Italiana SRL (Milano)
• The Netherlands: Maxcom (Am Leusden)
• Norway: Nor Perifen AS (Bakkestua)
• Spain: Siscomp (Barcelona), SM Data (Barcelona)
• Sweden: Innovation Data AB (Spanga)
• Swilzerland: Micro System Technik (Zurich)
• UK: CPU Peripherals (Surrey)
• Germany: Agora Computerperipherie (Munchen)
• Yougoslavia: Inpro 000 (Cakovec)

Asia

• Hong Kong: Microware USA, Macro Business Appliances
• Singapore: Alcyona Pacific Basin
• Taiwan: Runcomp International

USA
Anthem, Wyle, Hall-Mark, Pioneer

Key VAR accounts
Mountain, Tense, Tallgrass, Delta Micro

* net of intercompany sales

* net of intercompany sales

Wangtek’s market share in Europe
(QIC, DAT and 8mm drives from 40MB to 2GB)

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue ≠42, published on July 1991.

Note: Rexon filed for bankruptcy in 1995 and was acquired by Legacy Storage Systems, a Canadian company and renamed Tecmar Technologies, Inc. (TTInc). In 1997, Legacy changed its name to Tecmar Technologies International (TTIntl). In 2000, the assets of TTInc were sold to Overland Data, but as of 2007, the Tecmar, WangTek, and WangDAT brands are no longer in use.