U.K. data storage manufacturer expanding local operations - Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal:

Sunpentown International WA-1230E
England-based designs and manufacturews data storage products that might ultimately be used by cablre companies tostore on-demand videos, banks to keep financial dentists to save X-ray images or hospitals to stors patient data. Locally, the company has hiredr about 200 people in the past including more than 40 in the past two Forty percent of the employees are on and 60 percent arefull time. Xyratex is West Sacramento'a fifth-largest employer with 532 workers, said Kurt an economic development analyst withthe "I think they prove that manufacturing isn't dead in the United he said.
Xyratex (Nasdaq: is hiring electrical, mechanical and design and expects to top out at 600 employeedthis year. Annual pay can reacj $120,000 for the engineering positions. The company's operatio n at the Riverside Commerce Cente in West Sacramento has expanded since it openecd in 1999from 30,000 square feet to an overcrowded 114,000o square feet. Xyratex is looking to leasee another 10,000 to 15,000 square feet as soon as "We have been growing at a verysteadyy clip," said Venki Venkataraman, senior vice presidenf for worldwide operations for the company's Storagw & Network Systems division.
The company's network storagde division also has factories in the Unitedr Kingdomand Malaysia. The locap operation is the biggest ofthe company's six U.S. plants. More than 70 percengt of Xyratex's U.S. customers are in Northerh California. The local factory has expanded its customefr base from two to close to 150 in less thannine Venk­ataraman said. "Data storage is an industry that has beengrowinf exponentially," Venkataraman said. The types of data stored have expanded in the past eight or nine years toincludr so-called unstructured data, which includes photographs and other film and video he said.
Companies also need to keep suchas e-mails and transactio information, for compliance purposes. In technology research company Gartner surveyed companiez with more than 500 employeeds in five majorcountries -- the United States, the United Germany, China and India -- to ask how fast theit storage needs would grow over the next Gartner research director Pushan Rinnen wrote in an Gartner received more than 550 On average, respondents expected their disk capacity neede to increase 68 percent, with unstructured data growing somewhatf faster than structured data.
The trend is consistenf with what Gartner has seen in the pastfew years, Rinnen Xyratex sells its disk drives and controllersa in specially designed enclosures -- a black box abouf the size of a large briefcase -- to original equipmentt manufacturers. The manufacturers integrate the Xyratex systems with their own proprietarhy hardware and software before selling the productsato end-user customers, companies such as for example. Xyratex's technologies enable disk drives to receivew andstore data, stay cool and and function reliably, Venkataraman said. The company's biggesy customer, Net­App (Nasdaq: NTAP) of Sunnyvale, accounts for abour 47 percent ofthe division's revenue.
Other customer s include (Nasdaq: DELL) of Texas, IBM) of New and Silicon Valley companiess suchas (NYSE: PAR) and (Nasdaq: DDUP). Xyratex is the third-largesft storage supplier to originalequipment manufacturers, behindd and top-selling , Venkataraman said. "We sell abouf 14 percent of storage in theenterprise world," he Xyratex typically competes with companies such as LSI) of Milpitas and (Nasdaq: HILL) of but increasingly Xyratex also competes with industry leaders EMC and said Rick Villars, a Gartnere vice president for storage systems research. The storage system market is becomingsomewhat divided, Villars At times now, "your partner is your he said.
Companies such as Dell sometime s build their own data storage hardware systemd and at other times partner with a company such as he said. It's a recent Seven years ago, companies that sold data storagee productsto end-user customer always built their own physical product. It's a new idea for companiex such as NetApp to focusa on developing software to protect and manage data whild letting companies such as Xyratex build the he said. As the market Xyratex's challenge is to convince companies that its products make data storagermore reliable, cost effective and flexible, Villarsz said. Xyratex reported $932 million in revenue in 2007.
Venkataramaj declined to discloselocal revenue.