ADIC-Overland Battle

In a letter to Overland officials, meanwhile, ADIC Chairman and CEO Peter van Oppen said his company is prepared to acquire all outstanding shares of Overland stock at $7.90, but that he is disappointed that Overland has declined to engage in talks with ADIC.

Redmond, Wash.-based ADIC, which in August purchased slightly more than 9 percent of San Diego-based Overland&s shares, also gave notice of its acquisition bid in an SEC filing.

Overland declined to comment on the move, but it appears the company is not open to a buyout. In late August, Overland adopted a shareholder rights plan as protection against what it called “abusive or coercive takeover tactics.”

Several Overland solution providers expressed concern that the company&s channel efforts could suffer under ADIC. “Are they going to screw with Overland&s channel programs? Let it run as a separate organization? We need to know,” said one solution provider.

Aside from a few OEM relationships with vendors such as Hewlett-Packard, more than half of Overland&s sales come from the channel. Partners say ADIC, which has both direct and indirect sales, has a more aggressive direct sales culture.

“If ADIC were to preserve the Overland channel programs, possibly keep it as a separate division, and keep their channel partners—they have good partners—and their programs, then ADIC can both work with the channel and preserve their direct sales force,” said John Zammett, president of HorizonTek, a Huntington, N.Y., solution provider.

Mike Fanelli, western regional manager at SSI hubcity, an Overland solution provider in Metuchen, N.J., said he assumes ADIC is looking to fill a hole in its product line. “They&d be picking up the low-end tape and disk products and [Overland-owned storage software developer] Zetta,” he said. “But that seems to be pretty expensive. Maybe Overland is better at the SMB space than ADIC.”

ADIC makes midrange and enterprise-class tape automation products, disk-based backup arrays and storage management software, while Overland focuses on entry-level and midrange tape automation. Overland also has a disk-based backup appliance family and just introduced its first line of primary storage arrays.