AdStar

AdStar (an acronym for Advanced Storage and Retrieval) was a division of IBM that encompassed all the company's storage products including disk, tape and optical storage systems and storage software.

AdStar
TypeSubsidiary
IndustryData storage
Founded1992 (1992)
Defunct1995 (1995)
FateRestructured
SuccessorIBM Storage Systems Division
Key people
Ed Zschau, CEO
ParentInternational Business Machines

History

In 1992 IBM combined their Storage Products businesses comprising eleven sites in eight countries into this division.[1] On its creation, AdStar became the largest information storage business in the world. It had a revenue of $6.11 billion, of which $500 million were sales to other manufacturers (OEM sales), and generated a gross profit of about $440 million (before taxes and restructuring).[2]

To provide additional autonomy—thereby further encouraging OEM sales—IBM established AdStar as a wholly owned subsidiary in April 1993, with outsider Ed Zschau as Chairman and CEO.[2] To some observers this appeared to be an admission by IBM that the storage subsidiary no longer provided a strategic advantage by providing proprietary devices for its mainframe products,[2] and that it was being positioned to be sold off as a part of then the IBM chairman John Akers' business strategy. The replacement of Akers by Lou Gerstner in April 1993 changed the strategy from spinout to turnaround,[3] but the disk drive business under Zschau continued to be troubled, declining to $3 billion in 1995.[4]

Zschau left AdStar in October 1995, replaced by IBM insider Jim Vanderslice.[4] The AdStar division was dismembered thereafter; the AdStar Distributed Storage Manager (ADSM) was renamed Tivoli Storage Manager in 1999,[5] and the disk drive business component was sold off to Hitachi in 2003.[6]

References
  1. "Rochester chronology". IBM Archives. International Business Machines Corporation. 2003. Archived from the original on January 5, 2019.
  2. Fisher, Lawrence M. (April 24, 1993). "I.B.M. Gives AdStar Storage Unit More Autonomy". The New York Times. p. A39. Archived from the original on November 9, 2012. Retrieved 2023-08-11.
  3. Hof, Robert D. (May 10, 1993). "Ed Zschau Doesn't Fit Big Blue's Mold—And That's the Point". Bloomberg Businessweek. Bloomberg L.P. Archived from the original on January 28, 2021.
  4. Abate, Tom (October 1, 1995). "Some Big Blue attitude". San Francisco Chronicle. Hearst Newspapers. Archived from the original on December 8, 2014.
  5. Russel, Charlie; Sharon Crawford (2000). Microsoft Windows 2000 Server Administrator's Companion. Microsoft Press. p. 1371. ISBN 9781572318199 – via Google Books.
  6. Aughton, Simon (June 6, 2002). "Hitachi buys IBM disk drive business". Expert Reviews. Dennis Publishing. Archived from the original on March 11, 2011.
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