RE: Iomega response to Quest?
Just one more message...
Below, you'll find a copy of a message that I posted over on the Iomega thread last night. It's a repost of a message that Dale Velk left on the Motley Fool board about some new Iomega job listings.
Basically, Iomega is hiring MR and GMR Head/Media engineers. They don't currently have any products that use that technology. This (MR) is the same technology that is used in Orb and Quest. GMR is the new technology that IBM uses in their 16.8 GB drive.
It looks very likely that Iomega is preparing a response to the "high-end" products. Iomega is usually very tight-lipped about new products (with the exception of Clik, which it needed to publicize for OEM support), so it's hard to tell how far along they are. It's possible (but not too likely?) that they're far enough along that this product could arrive either before or shortly after Quest.
This could be quite a threat to SyQuest in the near future.
Anyway, here's the message...
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The following was posted on the Motley Fool board. I found it informative, and hadn't seen it yet yere:
Subject: random thoughts on IOM position listings
Date: Mon, Dec 8, 1997 20:44 EST
From: DaleVelk
Speculation into forthcoming Iomega products/developments basedon the December 3, 1997 Iomega new job opening list:
The first position listed below would strongly suggest a new/modified removable storage drive based on MR or GMR technology. From the wording of the position announcement it may be that IOM will be able to moderately modify the current Jaz drives (new media/new heads) to allow for a rapid transition to the deployment of the new technology. Iomega had initially advertised several MR Head research/design postions around 1 year ago, it appears that they are ready to proceed with some products in this area. MR is Magneto Resistive, GMR is Gigantic Magneto Resistive. These are newly emerging head designs that allow for dramatically higher storage densities and substantially improved read/write performance. The "non-removable" storage drive insdustry is currently in rapid transition to MR head technology from Thin Film head drives and should be substantially coverted over by the end of 1998. The recently announced ORB drive by Castlewood and the Quest by SYQT are both based on MR technology.
Title Head/Media Engineer
Location Milpitas, CA 95035, USA
Description: Evaluate performance of advanced MR and GMR heads on our drives.
Required: 2 to 5 years experience
Preferred: BSEE or a Physics degree.
The next position listing also seems to imply a new/modified drive product. This also appears to be focused on improved peformance products. Around a year ago IOM received a patent for a neural network approach to processing read channel data. At the time I speculated that this would allow for improved performance over existing PRML (partial response maximum likelyhood) processing. It would seem to me that IOM is seeking to increase either the accuracy and/or speed of read/write channel operations.
Title Electrical Engineer
Location Milpitas, CA 95035, USA
Description:
Install and test advanced Read/Write channels on our test stands. Interface with vendors on these advanced channels. Evaluate head/disk performance in conjunction with these channels.
Required: 2 to 5 years experience in test and evaluation of channels.
Preferred: BSEE
A third position listing that is interesting is for a "Licensee Support" person with one especially interesting responsibility:
* Ability to understand and bridge cultural differences between Licensees and Iomega which may include English, Korean, Chinese, and Japanese
This appears to anticipate the possibility of future liscensee production in either Korea or China. This may relate to one of the current Liscensees (NEC, Mitsumi) or perhaps to additional liscensees.
Title Licensee Support On Site Engineerng Liaison
Location Roy, UT 84067, USA
Description: Provides support to Iomega's Licensee manufacturing partners by technically interfacing with Iomega manufacturing and Licensee manufacturing company to provide high quality, high volume disk drive manufacturing.
Position Accountabilities:
* Experience with current Iomega Zip drive products
* Resides in respective country of Licensee or Licensee partner
* Wide knowledge and experience of disk drive theories of operation, design conventions, material characteristics and interactions, etc.
* Has responsibilities of Process and Product engineering
* Active participant in CLCA process worldwide
* Understand reason for and communicates Yields and DPPM
* Strong failure analysis to root cause capabilities
* Monitor with parametric data to ensure process capability goals are met
* Interface with Licensees to Iomega for problem solving and information sharing
* Effectively communicate the technical elements of design changes between Licensees, Iomega, and other Licensee partners
* Ensure process documentation is provided to Licensees
* Excellent written and verbal communications skills
* Leverage process improvements between Licensees and Iomega
* Interfaces with Product and Process Engineering relative to manufacturing and design issues and PQE on part quality and Supplier management
* Ability to understand and bridge cultural differences between Licensees and Iomega which may include English, Korean, Chinese, and Japanese
* Strong interpersonal skills
Also, here's a link to all of the current Iomega job listings:
jobs.hodes.com
I don't remember for sure, but it seems like this is 2-3X as many jobs as they had listed several months ago.
- Michael Coley
- i1.net |
