Rick Belluzzo will take over as chief executive officer (CEO) of data storage systems company Quantum Corp. on Sept. 3, replacing outgoing CEO Michael Brown, the company said Thursday in a statement.
Belluzzo’s new job will start days after he ends a 3-year stint at Microsoft Corp., where he joined as vice president of its consumer group and most recently served as president and chief operating officer. He stepped down from that position on May 1 when a broad reorganization of the company took place – a move that at least one analyst speculated at the time was due to internal disagreements at the company.
Credited as the force behind the growth of Microsoft’s .Net, XBox and MSN efforts, Belluzzo joins Quantum in Milpitas, Calif., as the company is seeing revenues decline and losses climb. For its last financial year, the company reported a 22 per cent decline in revenue to US$1.1 billion and a 74 per cent drop in net income to US$42.5 million.
Its current financial health, as measured by its fiscal first quarter report delivered a week ago, is not much brighter. The company announced a net loss of US$131 million on revenue of US$211 million, below the US$230 million to US$245 million revenue predicted by the company in late April. The lower than predicted figures were preceded by a warning that the company would miss its target, the second consecutive quarter it had been forced to issue such an announcement.
In addition to working at Microsoft, Belluzzo has also been chairman and CEO of Silicon Graphics and worked for 20 years at Hewlett-Packard Co. where he headed the company’s computer products division, Quantum said.