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>>...Based in the Minneapolis suburb of Plymouth, Tricord Systems Inc. is run by Chairman and Co-CEO John Mitcham, who worked with Canion at Texas Instruments and has known him for 30 years.
Canion spent about three weeks looking at the company before investing $2 million of his own money and $1 million from a group of local investors. In fact, he began providing part-time consulting for Tricord in January.
Tricord has developed technology that is designed to help companies manage the storage capacity of their computer systems with a pooling of disk drives. The technology would allow new capacity to be added to the network and spread among users without having to take the network down, Canion says.
Founded in 1987, Tricord Systems used to develop computer servers but has since exited that business except for maintaining its existing systems. The company is just beginning to develop and market its new technology.
"They're like a public start-up, starting over to reposition the company," Canion says. "The technology has been developed. What has to be done is apply the technology.
"It became a challenge on how to focus and where to best apply our resources."
Canion would not say what market segments the company will target. But he says Tricord will partner with key players in certain segments.
No formal guidelines have been set for how the CEO's office would function, but Mitcham will work in Minnesota, and Canion will work in Houston.
"We really are just going to share the duties with no specific areas of responsibilities," Canion says. "I'll be involved in a lot of different areas. Canion plans to work with Tricord for about a year and pull out gradually as it reaches the next phase of development.
Three former Compaq employees have joined Canion in Tricord's Houston office, which opened in January. The company now has a total of 35 employees.
Tricord employees David Cabello, Kathleen Clark and Lewis Schrock also worked with Canion at GK Intelligent Systems Inc., a Houston-based software development company. Canion became chairman of that firm in April 1998, but left in August after a disagreement with Gary Kimmons, the company's founder and CEO.
Twelve former Compaq employees had joined Canion on that venture and left the firm when he departed.<<
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