14 DAY TRIAL // We'd have expected Seagate to wait until the latest acquisition was completed before appointing a leader of its solid-state drive business, but that has not turned out to be the case.
Seagate Technologies has decided who will be managing its solid-state drive division: Gary Gentry, previously of Micron.
The man oversaw the Enterprise SSD Division at Micron Corporation and, before that, held leadership positions at Spansion, Storage Genetics and Maxtor. He even worked at Seagate for a time in fact.
We find it particularly curious that Seagate actually made this management decision, and not because of Gary Gentry himself.
Rather, we would have expected it to wait until the OCZ acquisition was finalized and then appoint the company's CEO in that position, Mr. Ryan Petersen.
Alas, even as it posted its financial results for the latest quarter, Seagate made no mention of the deal, causing the suspicion that it might not go through after all.
Then again, there might be another reason for Gary Gentry's recruitment: OCZ has just announced that its new manufacturing facility in Taipei, Taiwan has achieved ISO 9001: 2008 certification from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).
"We are very pleased to have obtained ISO 9001: 2008 certification demonstrating that our manufacturing processes not only follow rigorous quality standards, but they are consistent with leading companies worldwide," said Jason Ruppert, sr. vice president of operations for OCZ Technology.
"This ISO certification provides our OEM customers with a validation that our manufacturing processes deliver high quality, reliable products, and a heightened user experience."
We'd agree that this is impressive, if that standard wasn't already old. There are third-tier SSD manufacturing outfits that got ISO 9001:2000 and 9001:2008 certification years ago.
In other words, OCZ is a bit behind the times in terms of quality assurance. And its shares are also not doing that well, though they did rise when rumors about the impending acquisition came out.
Thus, Seagate may be of the opinion that Gentry has a better shot at pushing its solid-state drive business forward, including OCZ and its fabled Barefoot controller if it comes down to it.