ATTO Lets Some Go

Storage hardware vendor ATTO Technology Inc. has chopped about 16 percent of its staff, according to a former employee affected by the layoff.

The ex-ATTO employee, who asked to remain anonymous, says the company cut 24 jobs across the board, affecting sales, marketing, operations, and engineering, bringing the number of employees to approximately 125. ATTO representatives declined to comment for this story.

The layoffs are the first in its 15-year history, says our source. "They've been a conservative company by nature. That's why you haven't seen this in the past."

So why now? The company, based in Amherst, N.Y., a suburb of Buffalo, was forced to eliminate jobs to make up for losses caused by the general downturn in the economy, the ex-employee says. Sales of ATTO's new iPBridge, which connects legacy SCSI tape drives and libraries to Ethernet networks, have yet to pick up, while its traditional product lines, like its Fibre Channel bridges, SCSI and FC host bus adapters, and Diamond storage arrays, have seemingly slowed to a trickle (see ATTO Takes iSCSI to Tape).

The pink slips went out on Tuesday morning. "There was no warning at all that this was going to happen," says our source. He insists he has no hard feelings against the company, only that he hopes that revealing the layoffs will lend credibility to the job search he's suddenly embarked on.

ATTO's past OEM partners have included EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC), Overland Storage Inc. (Nasdaq: OVRL), and Quantum Corp. (NYSE: DSS).

Other storage companies feeling the pinch lately, with layoffs in the last two months, include:

— Eugénie Larson, Reporter, Byte and Switch