Quantum Corp. will continue to invest in tape and strengthen its disk-based DX offerings while developing systems that are optimized for the backup, archival and retrieval market.

Speaking to Computerworld Singapore during a visit here last week, chairman and chief executive officer Richard Belluzzo was upbeat about prospects for the company, which recently had its best quarter in three years. For its fiscal third quarter which ended in December 2004, it reported revenue of US$201 million, up 12 percent from the fiscal second quarter.

As part of a three-year plan, Quantum will capitalize on its Certance acquisition to build up a leadership role in tape, library and automation market, said Belluzzo.

The acquisition of the LTO player in October last year was aimed at growing company?s footprint in the tape market. The lower-cost LTO products from Certance are targeted at the midrange market while the company?s SuperDLT offerings compete in the enterprise library space against the likes of HP and IBM.

Quantum currently spends between 10.5 percent and 11.5 percent of revenue on R&D, the bulk of which goes into tape product enhancement in the two key areas of tape drives and automation products, said Belluzzo.

?We are not moving away from tape investments. We are looking to improve the capabilities, cost and performance,? he said. He cited the company?s DLTSage and DLTIce as two examples of software innovations related to tape. DLTSage is a diagnostic architecture for predicting and preventing tape drive and media failures, and DLTIce serves the regulatory compliance market by providing Write Once, Read Many (WORM) functionality using a standard Super DLTtape II media cartridge.

The company is also working to reinforce its disk-based DX-Series of virtual tape offerings. Quantum recently announced a new hardware-based compression technology ? the Optyon In-line Data Compression technology ? that promises up to 2x compression without compromising performance.

Quantum, which started out in the hard drive business nearly a quarter of a century ago, divested that business in 2001. But the focus on DX does not mark a return to its disk roots, said Belluzzo. Instead, it forms an integral part of the company?s whole strategy for the backup, archive and recovery market.

We will strengthen the tape product line, establish DX and put disk and tape together to offer systems that are optimized for backup, said Belluzzo. Disk has an advantage when it comes to performance, and can be used to for staging data during a backup process.

?It?s the tip of the iceberg of opportunity,? said Belluzzo. New features are being built onto Quantum?s virtual tape library solutions in areas such as partitioning and compression, solutions for remote sites to handle manual intervention issues, and technologies around data reduction and security.

The company also plans to ?build more software depth? in backup, archival and recovery. It currently partners storage software companies such as Veritas and Comvault.