OCZ Storage Solutions

OCZ Storage Solutions
Subsidiary of Toshiba
Industry Computer
Predecessors
Founded January 21, 2014 (2014-01-21)
Headquarters San Jose, California, United States
Key people
 Ralph Schmitt (CEO)
Products Solid-state drives
Parent Toshiba Corporation
Website ocz.com
ZCO Liquidating Corporation
Formerly called
 OCZ Technology Group
Public
Industry Computer
Fate Bankrupted
Successor OCZ Storage Solutions
Founded August 2002
Founders Art Armagast and Ryan Petersen
Defunct August 18, 2014 (2014-08-18)
Headquarters San Jose, California, United States
Products Solid-state drives, Power supply units, DIMMs, Thermal grease
Number of employees
 550 (April 24, 2013)
Subsidiaries Indilinx
Website http://cases.gcginc.com/ocz/

OCZ Storage Solutions is a manufacturer of solid state drives (SSDs) based in San Jose, California, USA, and is the new company formed after the sale of OCZ Technology Group's SSD assets to Toshiba Corporation. Since entering the memory market as OCZ Technology in 2002, the company has targeted its products primarily at the computer hardware enthusiast market, producing performance DDR RAM, video cards, USB drives, and various cooling products. OCZ currently produces SSD devices using SATA III, PCI Express, Serial attached SCSI[1] and USB 3.0 interfaces, for both client and enterprise applications.

Company

Founded in 2002, San Jose, California-based OCZ Technology Group, Inc. designed and manufactured solid state drives (SSDs) and power supply units for the consumer and enterprise markets.

OCZ maintained satellite offices in The Netherlands, United Kingdom, and Israel along with manufacturing and logistics facilities in Taiwan. In June 2006, OCZ went public on the London Stock Exchange Alternative Investment Market (LSE AIM), with the ticker symbol "OCZ". On May 25, 2007, OCZ acquired PC Power & Cooling, whose products include power supplies.[2] PC Power & Cooling is in Carlsbad, California. It operates as a separate satellite office for OCZ and maintains its own product lines. In early March 2009, OCZ announced their intent to delist from the LSE, to pursue a listing on an American stock exchange. On April 24, 2010, OCZ announced a listing on NASDAQ, with the ticker symbol "OCZ".

In September 2010 OCZ announced the RevoDrive, which is a bootable PCI-E drive for the enthusiast market. It also recently announced an SSD interface called High Speed Data Link (HSDL), which is a PCIe/SAS hybrid interface, along with corresponding products to implement it.[3] As of 2012, OCZ's SSDs offered up to a 1 TB capacity.[4]

In November 2010, OCZ acquired intellectual property from Solid Data Inc., for Fibre Channel, SAS, and controller assets for solid state drives. The cost was approximately $950,000, paid with restricted common stock and cash.[5]

On January 11, 2011, OCZ announced that they would discontinue RAM production, citing poor market performance and the weakening global DRAM market. OCZ discontinued their remaining lines of DRAM models at the end of their 2010 fiscal year on February 28, 2011.[6]

In March 2011, OCZ acquired Indilinx Company, Limited, a privately held fabless provider of flash controller silicon and software for SSDs, for approximately $32 million of OCZ common stock.[7]

On October 5, 2011, OCZ announced an intent to acquire PLX Technology's Abingdon R&D department (formerly Oxford Semiconductor), which specializes in storage SoC development.[8]

On January 9, 2012 OCZ announced its acquisition of SANRAD Inc., a privately held provider of flash caching and virtualization software and hardware from the RAD Group. SANRAD became the OCZ Israel office.[9] Later in 2012, reports indicated that a possible acquisition of OCZ by Seagate Technology fell through.[10][11] On September 17, 2012, founder and CEO Ryan Petersen resigned, and chief marketing officer, Alex Mei, was appointed as interim CEO.[12] Media outlets speculated that Ryan was ousted by the board of directors.[13] On October 10, 2012, OCZ appointed board member Ralph Schmitt as the company’s president and CEO. Schmitt joined OCZ from PLX, where he served as president and CEO since 2008.[14]

Several shareholder lawsuits revolved around questionable accounting practices during 2012.[15] In May 2013 the NASDAQ gave OCZ until September 16, 2013 to file its delayed earnings.[16] The company was several quarters late in filing and restated earnings all the way back to 2008. On September 12, 2013, the company disclosed it would not meet the deadline, which was then extended to October 7.[17]

2013 saw OCZ's revenue fall steeply from $88.6 million in the second fiscal quarter of 2012 to $33.5 million in the second fiscal quarter of 2013, while financial losses increased. OCZ took a $30 million loan at a steep 15% interest rate from Hercules Technology Growth Capital. Because OCZ put in their own firm as collateral for the loan, Hercules Technology Growth Capital would gain ownership of OCZ if OCZ failed to repay the loan.[18]

After failing to meet the terms of the loan it was extended to June 2014, with the share price dropping 40% on November 4, 2013.[19]

On November 25, 2013, Hercules took control of the OCZ's bank accounts because it was not in compliance with the operating ratios and covenants which were part of the conditions that were part of the loan from Hercules.

On November 27, 2013, OCZ Technology stock was halted. OCZ then stated they expected to file a petition for bankruptcy and that Toshiba Corporation expressed interest in purchasing its assets in a bankruptcy proceeding.[20][21] On December 2, 2013, OCZ announced Toshiba agreed to purchase nearly all of OCZ's assets for $35 million.[22] The deal was completed on January 21, 2014 when the assets of OCZ Technology Group became a new independently-operated subsidiary of Toshiba named OCZ Storage Solutions.[23] OCZ Technology Group then changed its name to ZCO Liquidating Corporation.[24] On August 18, 2014, ZCO Liquidating Corporation and its subsidiaries were liquidated.[25]

The Securities and Exchange Commission charged former CEO Ryan Petersen and former CFO Arthur Knap for accounting failures.In a complaint filed in the Northern District of California, the SEC alleges that OCZ’s former CEO Ryan Petersen engaged in a scheme to materially inflate OCZ’s revenues and gross margins from 2010 to 2012. It separately charged OCZ’s former chief financial officer Arthur Knapp for certain accounting, disclosure, and internal accounting controls failures at OCZ. Knapp agreed to settle the SEC’s charges without admitting or denying the allegations against him. The SEC’s litigation continues against Petersen.[26]

Reliability history

The OCZ brand was used on SSDs that are notable for high failure rates. Two lines from the old OCZ Technology Group, the Petrol and the SATA II versions of the Octane, had return rates of over 40% at one anonymous French technology online retailer. The SATA II version of the 128 GB Octane had a return rate of 52.07%. No SSD company except for the OCZ Technology Group had any SSDs with a return rate of over 5% in this from this retailer in the data set that was published on March 5, 2013.[27] In a dataset published on April 30, 2014, OCZ again had the highest return rates in the same anonymous retailer.[28] The next dataset that was published on November 6, 2014 shows only one OCZ drive, the OCZ Agility 3 480 GB, which had a much lower return rate of 1.34%.[29]

A test currently being run by KitGuru shows that its five samples of the OCZ ARC100 240GB SSD, which was released after Toshiba acquired OCZ's assets, have withstood 22 terabytes of writes without any major failures.[30]

References

  1. ↑ http://www.oczenterprise.com/ssd-products/talos-2-r-sas-2.5-mlc.html
  2. ↑ Press release
  3. ↑ Anand Lal Shimpi (September 29, 2010). "OCZ's Fastest SSD, the IBIS and HDSL Interface Reviewed". Anand Tech blog. Retrieved December 9, 2013.
  4. ↑ http://www.ocztechnology.com/ocz-octane-sata-iii-2-5-ssd.html
  5. ↑ Press release: OCZ Technology Acquires Intellectual Property From Solid Data Inc. for Fibre-Channel, SAS, and Solid-State Drive Controller Assets, Nov. 15, 2010
  6. ↑ Hilbert Hagedoorn, OCZ to halt DRAM production completely, January 12, 2011
  7. ↑ "Addition of High Performance Controller Technology and Firmware is Expected to Accelerate Storage Technology Innovation and Expand Product Portfolio". Press release. March 14, 2011. Archived from the original on March 16, 2011. Retrieved September 18, 2013.
  8. ↑ Press release: OCZ Technology Acquires UK Design Team from PLX Technology, October 5, 2011
  9. ↑ Press release
  10. ↑ Eric Savitz (September 27, 2012). "No, Seagate Is Not Going To Buy OCZ Technology Group". Forbes CIO Network blog. Retrieved September 18, 2013.
  11. ↑ Chris Mellor (September 27, 2012). "'Seagate's OCZ gobble was real, but went sour in CEO row': Insiders claim former top dog Petersen wanted more control". The Register. Retrieved September 18, 2013.
  12. ↑ "OCZ Board Appoints Alex Mei as Interim CEO; Accepts Ryan Petersen's Resignation". Press release. Archived from the original on September 21, 2012. Retrieved December 9, 2013.
  13. ↑ Anshel Sag (September 17, 2012). "Breaking: Ryan Petersen Ousted as CEO of OCZ Technology". Bright Side of News blog. Retrieved December 9, 2013.
  14. ↑ "OCZ Technology Appoints Ralph Schmitt as President and CEO". Press release. October 10, 2012. Archived from the original on October 12, 2012. Retrieved September 18, 2013.
  15. ↑ Bill Kyros. "OCZ Technology Group Shareholder Class Action Lawsuit". Lawyer web site. Retrieved September 18, 2013.
  16. ↑ "Current Report Pursuant to Section 13 or 15 (d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934". Form 8-K (US Securities and Exchange Commission). May 28, 2013. Retrieved September 18, 2013.
  17. ↑ "OCZ Technology Receives Extension From NASDAQ". Press release. September 12, 2013. Retrieved September 18, 2013.
  18. ↑ Andy Patrizio (October 17, 2013). "Is OCZ on its last legs?". IT World. Retrieved November 6, 2013.
  19. ↑ Jan Willem Aldershoff (November 5, 2013). "OCZ stock crashes to new low – will they survive?". Myce News. Retrieved November 6, 2013.
  20. ↑ Kristian Vättö (November 27, 2013). "OCZ Files for Bankruptcy - Toshiba Offers to Buy the Assets". Anand Tech. Retrieved November 27, 2013.
  21. ↑ "OCZ Filing for Bankruptcy, Announces Offer From Toshiba to Purchase Assets". Press release. November 27, 2013. Retrieved December 3, 2013.
  22. ↑ "OCZ Reaches Agreement With Toshiba Corporation to Acquire Solid State Drive Business" (Press release). San Jose, California: OCZ Technology. December 2, 2013. Retrieved December 3, 2013.
  23. ↑ "Toshiba Corporation Completes Acquisition of OCZ Technology Group's Assets and Launches New Subsidiary, OCZ Storage Solutions". Financial Post. 2014-01-21. Retrieved 2014-01-22.
  24. ↑ http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1355128/000119312514022190/d667358d8k.htm
  25. ↑ http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1355128/000119312514313511/d775256d8k.htm
  26. ↑ SEC (October 6, 2015). "SEC Charges Former Executives With Accounting Fraud and Other Accounting Failures". SEC. Retrieved October 6, 2015.
  27. ↑ Prieur, Marc (March 5, 2013). "Les taux de retour des composants (8)" [Component return rates (8)]. Hardware.fr (in French) (Hardware.fr SARL). Retrieved July 23, 2014.
  28. ↑ Prieur, Marc (April 30, 2014). "Les taux de retour des composants (10)" [Component return rates (10)]. Hardware.fr (in French) (Hardware.fr SARL). Retrieved July 23, 2014.
  29. ↑ Prieur, Marc (November 6, 2014). "Les taux de retour des composants (11)" [Component return rates (11)]. Hardware.fr (in French) (Hardware.fr SARL). Retrieved November 22, 2014.
  30. ↑ http://www.kitguru.net/components/ssd-drives/zardon/ocz-challenge-update-all-5-drives-hit-100tb-mark/

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