News

posted on 29 August 2008 13:07

Overland Storage has replaced its VP for world-wide sales, fired 53 staff and cut spending across the board as it rationalizes its operations following the SnapServer acquisition.

Overlan's financial situation can be characterized as turning round a losss-making ship. In Q4 fy08 Overland revenues were $28.9 million. Net loss for Q4 fy08 was $8.6 million. Full year fy08 revenues were $127.7 million and the fy08 net loss was $24.6 milion, a near $20 million improvement on fy07's $44.1 million.

In June, towards the end of fy08, Overland bought the SnapServer NAS business from Adaptec for $3.8 million.

It needs to integrate this business with its own infrastructure and operations and continue to cut operating expense (opex) so that it can return to profit faster.

Vern LoForti, Overland's president and CEO, said: "The Snap acquisition did .. result in a substantial increase to our operating expense base." So 13% of the workforce, 53 people, have lost their jobs, amongst them Bob Farkely, the worldwide sales VP. His responsibilities go to the recently recruited Ravi Pendekanti, who joined as the marketing VP in April this year. He is now worldwide VP for both sales and marketing.

Overland is cutting opex across the business and in every geography and expects a $10 million annualized saving from this - $340,000 from the fired staff - along with the staff cuts. It's become a more channel-focussed business - before it was OEM-focussed - and hopes, it seems, to get its losses under control in fiscal 2009 and, hopefully, move into profit in fiscal 2010.

^{[Chris Mellor.]}