Procom Technology, Inc., was an American computer storage products manufacturer based in

Orange County, California Orange County (officially the County of Orange; often initialized O.C.) is a county (United States), county located in the Los Angeles metropolitan area in Southern California, United States. As of the 2020 United States census, the population ...

, and active from 1987 to 2005. The company initially produced a wide range of standalone magnetic and optical data storage products for the

IBM PC The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the List of IBM Personal Computer models, IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible ''de facto'' standard. Released on ...

and compatibles and the

Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...

before honing in on platform-agnostic

network-attached storage Network-attached storage (NAS) is a file-level computer data storage server connected to a computer network providing data access to a Heterogeneous computing, heterogeneous group of clients. In this context, the term "NAS" can refer to both th ...

(NAS) products. Toward the end of their existence, they were most well known for their CD Tower series of CD-based NAS devices. The company's intellectual property was acquired by

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010 which developed and sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services. Sun contributed sig ...

in 2005 for $50 million.

History

Foundation (1987–1992)

Procom Technology was founded by Alex Razm'joo, Nick Shahrestany, Frank Alaghband, and Alex Aydin, in

Irvine, California Irvine () is a Planned community, planned city in central Orange County, California, United States, in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. It was named in 1888 for the landowner James Irvine. The Irvine Company started developing the area in the ...

, in 1987. All four founders were Iranian-born immigrants who had worked various computer industry jobs while studying at the

University of California, Irvine The University of California, Irvine (UCI or UC Irvine) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Irvine, California, United States. One of the ten campuses of the University of California system, U ...

. Both Razm'joo and Shahrestany previously worked for CMS Enhancements, another data storage product firm based in Irvine. . The four founded Procom with $40,000 in start-up capital. In August 1987, they released their first product, an external 5.25-inch floppy disk drive intended for use with

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

's new PS/2 line of personal computers, which replaced the

's 5.25-inch floppy disk format of choice with the new 3.5-inch floppy disk format, invented by

Sony is a Japanese multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at Sony City in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. The Sony Group encompasses various businesses, including Sony Corporation (electronics), Sony Semiconductor Solutions (i ...

in 1982. The product was fairly successful, and by 1988 the company posted $2.5 million in annual revenue. In the late 1980s, the company released a family of external hard drives that combined with software for the

and IBM PC and compatibles allowed data to be stored and transferred between them. The company's revenue reached $12 million in 1989 and $18 million in 1990. In 1991, the company employed 125 from their office in Irvine and posted sales of $28 million. In 1992, the company moved its headquarters within Irvine to a larger 62,000-square-foot warehouse and shortly thereafter announced their intentions to go public. The company backed out of their

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investm ...

that year, however.

Success (1992–2000)

Procom enjoyed a reputation for its breadth of data storage products in the early 1990s, the majority comprising hard-drive based

(NAS) devices. In 1994, the company debuted the CD Tower line of CD-based NASes, intended for corporate clients whose networks frequently accessed and copied large amounts of data and software from CD. All drives in CD Tower units were

SCSI Small Computer System Interface (SCSI, ) is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices, best known for its use with storage devices such as hard disk drives. SCSI was introduced ...

-based; the initial lineup comprised a 7-drive unit, a 21-drive unit, and a 49-drive unit. In late 1995 or early 1996, Procom introduced the CD Tower Rax, a 56-drive unit with all hot-swappable components (barring the two redundant power supplies). The latter cost $69,000 in 1996. By late 1996, Procom had expanded internationally, with offices in France, Germany, and Canada, and employed 200 people in total. In 1997, five years after their first IPO went nowhere, the company filed to go public again on the

Nasdaq The Nasdaq Stock Market (; National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the U.S. by volume, and ranked second on the list ...

. The IPO was a success, the company netting $18 million from the sale of 2 million shares. The four co-founders each sold the majority of their stake in the company while its ticker was worth $9 per share in 1997, the proceeds from this making each a millionaire. In the couple of years that followed the company experienced a precipitous decline in revenue owing to decreasing corporate interest in CD-based NASes in favor of developments in traditional, re-writable

hard drive A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating hard disk drive platter, pla ...

–based NASes, whose disk densities and cost-per-megabyte were quickly rivaling that of the CD-ROM. The company's stock price rebounded somewhat by the turn of the millennium, and in 2000 the company's stock was heavily affected by the

dot-com boom The dot-com bubble (or dot-com boom) was a stock market bubble that ballooned during the late-1990s and peaked on Friday, March 10, 2000. This period of market growth coincided with the widespread adoption of the World Wide Web and the Intern ...

, reaching an all-time high of $89.75 per share in March 2000 before dropping rapidly and bouncing again to $74 per share in June 2000 before stabilizing at $57. This was preceded by a six-quarter period of losses totaling $11 million and a 39-percent reduction in sales.

Decline and sale to Sun Microsystems (2000–2006)

In 2002, Shahrestany, Alaghband, and Aydin resigned as officers of Procom, leaving Razm'joo as the sole remaining founder still managing the company; Shahrestany and Alaghband both remained on the board of directors, however. In May 2005,

agree to acquired Procom's intellectual property for $50 million. The remaining husk of the company was acquired by CNDL Acquisition Corporation, a private company founded by Razmjoo, in December 2006.

References

External links

* {{Sun Microsystems 1987 establishments in California 2006 disestablishments in California American companies established in 1987 American companies disestablished in 2006 Computer companies established in 1987 Computer companies disestablished in 2006 Computer storage companies Defunct computer companies of the United States Defunct computer hardware companies Sun Microsystems acquisitions