TECHNOLOGY : Ultrastore Moves in on Western Digital in Market for PC Disk Controllers

It’s really just a coincidence that Ultrastore Corp.’s headquarters are just down the street from the new Western Digital facility in the Irvine Spectrum. But it’s handy coincidence nonetheless for Ultrastore, which is playing David to Western Digital’s Goliath in the market for the unglamorous but critical personal computer products called disk controllers.

Formed last year by a group of electronics-industry veterans led by Spectra Logic co-founder Steve Roberts, Ultrastore is now shipping disk controllers for the high-performance PCs that use Intel’s 386 and 486 series microprocessors. Disk controllers, as their name suggests, serve as an intelligent interface between a computer and the disk drive that stores data.

Ultrastore says Western Digital’s widely used controllers aren’t quite fancy enough for the best PCs. “We picked the part of the market where they don’t do well,” Roberts explained. “They need high volume, and when you do that, you strip out some of the performance.”

He said Ultrastore is already doing about $600,000 a month in sales, and the goal is $1 million a month by next month and $50 million to $100 million in annual revenues within the next few years.

Roberts had been a co-founder of Spectra Logic, a disk controller company that was sold to Cipher Data Products in San Diego for $15 million in 1984. More recently, he served as director of marketing for Santa Clara-based Data Technology, as did several other Ultrastore executives.

Ultrastore, which required about $500,000 to get off the ground, did not use venture capital funding, and shares are held by employees. The 10-person engineering staff is in the Silicon Valley, while eight administrative and sales employees work out of headquarters in Irvine. The controllers, which sell for about $150 a piece, are manufacturered under contract in Anaheim.