Gadzoox started out making electronic test equipment and pivoted to storage networks in 1995. Its bet was that servers would stop keeping their own disks and share big pools of storage instead. Linking them needed a fast new kind of network called Fibre Channel. Gadzoox sold the hubs and switches in the middle. When it filed to go public in 1999, storage area networks were the hot new idea in the data center.

From Test Gear to Fibre

Gadzoox was founded in April 1992 in Silicon Valley. Since October 1995 it had focused entirely on Fibre Channel products. Its hubs and switches connected servers to disk arrays and tape libraries at high speed. It sold mostly through big storage and computer makers, such as Compaq, which put Gadzoox gear inside their own systems. The bet was that every large company would build a storage network, and that Gadzoox could become a leading supplier of the plumbing.

A Hot Debut, Then Chapter 11

Gadzoox priced its IPO at $21 a share in July 1999 and listed on Nasdaq as ZOOX. The storage boom carried the stock through its first year. Larger switch makers such as Brocade and McDATA took most of the market as it grew. Gadzoox's sales fell when the tech bust hit, and its losses mounted. It filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in San Jose on August 22, 2002.

Cover: Marguerite at the Spinning Wheel, from Faust, Eugène Delacroix. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a spinning wheel (spinning fibre).