Quantum Corp., one of the leading makers of hard disk drives, formally exited that market on Friday when shareholders approved a merger of the company's hard disk group into disk drive maker Maxtor Corp., creating the world's largest disk drive company. The deal, first disclosed on Oct. 4, was valued at $2.3 billion.

The new Quantum Corp., with 3,000 employees and annual revenues of $1.4 billion, will focus on three markets: network-attached storage appliances, multivendor storage networking systems, and a broad range of services, including consulting and support.

The overall storage market is estimated to be worth about $100 billion in annual sales, and Quantum plans to focus on some of the fastest-growing segments, including network attached storage and storage area networks, says Michael Brown, chairman and chief executive officer. "The exciting thing is that networking concepts are being applied to storage. Our new focus allows us to move forward aggressively in those high-growth areas," he says.

The vendor also has a strong position in the enterprise automated tape library market and this week introduced the P3000 Gemini series tape library for mixed storage environments. The product combines a Gigabit Ethernet-based network attached storage system with a Fibre Channel-based storage-area network system. Prices start at $112,565. It is available now.