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11.19.07
The End Of An Era
 By Steve Duplessie
What is more surprising to you, that MTI quietly went belly up in October after 1100 years, or that they didn't go belly up in 1995 as you thought?
They may not mean anything to you, but they represent a weird set of feelings to me.
MTI was one of those classic industry fairy tales - one of the many offshoots of then storage kingpin System Industries. Steve Hammerslag and co. got Ray Noorda, founder of Novell, to invest big in MTI - and then got richer, poorer, and finally dead. I'm not suggesting that the MTI ride killed him; he was 82 or so after all. "Hammer" left System Industries to start MTI, while Jack Egan left the same to join his pop at EMC. Those paths would cross again later.
MTI began as one of those companies everyone hates - stuffed with young, testosterone filled males whose sole mission in life was to get paid. They were the brash west coast version of EMC, actually. And like EMC, they began with humble engineering intellect and violent sales execution, each with almost cult-like cultures. I could tell tales of debauchery that would make you blush - from either camp. Boys will be boys - and boys with money and machismo without any practical experience to realize sometimes things change can be downright dangerous.
MTI built a company by selling Exabyte 8mm tape drives - arguably the worst quality devices in history - on to VAX clusters. If I'm not mistaken, they charged about $38,000 for a 2GB tape drive connected to an HSC (you young punks can skip ahead). Note: I and a few other ESG'ers were at another "what not to do/MBA" company at the time, and we also used the EXB-8200 tape drive - and had very close to a 100% failure rate if I recall correctly. Anyhow, MTI's killer sales force made the company a ton of dough - because of course DEC couldn't figure out how to plug a SCSI tape drive into their own equipment - and went public for a nice meteoric rise. I would have loved to have seen the options dating practices during that era. The cult got crazier. The leadership challenged the youth to step it up, take no prisoners, and pledge allegiance. "Hammer, Hammer" chants were regularly featured at sales meetings, apparently.
I recall meeting either the VP of sales or the Eastern Regional somebody or another (a pal's boss) - a very tall, athletic, good-looking, pompous jackass I immediately hated. Maybe I was jealous. Mostly he was a pompous jackass. I knew their time would come. They had zip to fall back on, and no technology to defend. But they did survive for way longer than I would have ever thought possible.
They bought a company called SF2 - who really was one of the first ever RAID companies. They build the first giant RAID box - billed as fault-tolerant - and sold them for hundreds of thousands of dollars all over the place. Of course they never really worked that well, but they did have a patent that ended up being a lovely cash cow for many years.
Hammer and many of the boys went away eventually, the company struggled with its identity for many years, and the stock plummeted to de-listing territory time and time again. When they seemed to finally be on their last legs, out of nowhere old friend Jack Egan and co. surfaced to resuscitate MTI - effectively getting access to that RAID patent and turning MTI into an EMC VAR/Service company. They re-capped the company and while a fraction of their glorious self, they continued to hang around. There were a few guys who were there from beginning to end. I think they are crazy, but I respect the commitment.
My pal was a sales guy in Boston there for quite a while, back in the day. He tells a hysterical story of having a big prospect in to corporate for a tour, and having a giant tape library (robotics by Odetics, I believe) fire tapes at the customer like a machine gun while he dove to safety behind a row of dishwasher sized RA-60 disk drives. Good times.
So, with absolutely no fanfare (I found out yesterday), MTI filed bankruptcy, shut down the US operation, and sold their European assets to somebody. If you go to www.mti.com you end up in France, I believe. You need to specifically pick out the US site (www.us.mti.com) to get the story.
So rest in peace my friends. You were one to hate and one to envy at the same time. The early arrogance and stupidity certainly isn't restricted to MTI, but the fact that like a cockroach, they just kept on living through vast environmental changes makes me respect their endurance if nothing else.
Comments
About the Author:
Steve Duplessie is the author of the "Steve's IT Rants" blog, and the founder and Sr. Analyst of the Enterprise Strategy Group.
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