Service-Hotline: 
Not old, just a bit ‘retro’ – celebrates its 20th anniversary
What's the worst thing about a company anniversary? Right, the higher the number, the older you are. But it's also a chance to look back on many good years and a career that goes back a long way, to reminisce about the best moments, funniest encounters and greatest successes. Laugh about the "fails" that unfortunately just happen in business life and, above all, say a big thank you to the people who have contributed to your success. After all, a company is not only shaped by its owners, but also by customers, employees, suppliers, opportunities, mergers, innovations, competitors, partners and market developments. As technology and hardware fans, we don't want to send a standard thank you card to our customers and, above all, to the "helping hands" of TheBrokerSite, but we from quattroM would like to share our personal highlights with you in a kind of "journey through time".
2003
In 2003, the 32-bit architecture dominated our computer systems. Intel and AMD battled for market power, where the former chip manufacturer suffering a severe setback on 22 April of that year: AMD launched the first 64-bit CPU on the market. The K8 processor was called "AMD 64" and opened the door for the company to enter the lucrative server market as the "Opteron" server processor with the new socket 940. The fact that this could be an interesting and, above all, profitable business was no longer a novelty in Germany - a few "big players" were already on the market. Nevertheless, it was worth a try and "quattroM Remarketing Services" was founded on 1 December 2003.
2004
Just as the "sledgehammer", as the AMD Opteron was known internally, became established on the market, it really was a "sledgehammer" that we could make good use of in our company at the time. Business was going well and we had to create space in-house - we needed an office and a small storage facility. And what's the best way to start a business? With an eBay shop, of course. The platform was just 9 years old at the time and offered a great way to get started for many people who didn't want to set up their own online shop.
2005
A lot has changed from 2004 to 2005: where single-core processors dominated the PC market until then, dual-core and even multi-core processors are now gradually coming into play. Intel is is once again a pioneer here - even Apple is switching to Intel CPUs this year. Instead of PowerPC processors, the tech giant is using Intel 32-bit and 64-bit x86 architecture for its home computers. And what the refurbished sector in particular is realising is that environmental aspects are becoming increasingly important for private and corporate customers. Power-saving functions, more efficient power supply units and less harmful substances are being demanded. Interest in the second or even third use of computers is also increasing - good for us companies in the IT remarketing sector. In 2005, we were even able to conclude our first framework agreement with a major German company that operates specialist retail chains throughout the EU.
2006
Intel is once again ahead in the CPU market: on 27 July 2006, the Core 2 processor series was launched, comprising the Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad models. With the "Ultra-Mobile PC", Microsoft launched a new attempt to bring a portable, tablet-like PC onto the market - but this did not bring the hoped-for success. The manufacturer Samsung had a completely different surprise in store for the consumer market: the first purely electronic mass storage device, an SSD with 32 GB at a price of 699 dollars. A year full of innovations, in which tech companies in particular broke new ground and dared to do something - just like us. Our first "mega project" was just around the corner. 550 servers to be bought in one go, but we dared to take on the project and - with a bit of luck - were able to sell all the devices again.
2007
2007 was a trend-setting year - in a positive and negative sense. The biggest highlight came right at the beginning of the year: the Apple iPhone celebrated its premiere. Who would have believed that this little gadget would change our lives so fundamentally? From now on, our leisure time was shifted more into the "virtual world". Since 25 May 2007, you have been able to view areas on Google Street View as if you were there yourself. However, there were also major dark sides, such as the network worm "Storm", which spread to many computer systems at lightning speed via spam mails and combined them into a botnet to cause even more damage. We also needed more memory and PCs and servers that could run compute-intensive applications without any problems. The Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 was the first 1TB desktop hard drive, and AMD introduced quad-core technology for its Opteron processor series. FireWire S800T with a data transfer rate of 800 Mbit/s offered the same connection as a Cat 5e cable and Intel developed NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express).
2008
Faster, further, better - the industry has developed rapidly. At the end of 2008, there were around one billion PCs in use worldwide and a lot of electronic waste. No wonder Wall-E has to clean up the earth in the cinema and IBM opened its "greenest" data centre to date in Boulder, Colorado. The demand for reduced energy costs is high - but customers don't want to compromise on power and performance. The new data centre was at the forefront of density and virtualisation technology at the time. The trend towards reducing one's carbon footprint is emerging - and our company is feeling the effects. Requests for data erasure and recycling are constantly increasing - the office and warehouse are far too small, we need more space and employees. Just like modern computers, our company is also crying out for a new configuration" with more power.
2009
Our management is expanded, also our sales team - and we move to a larger office in Regensburg. But storage space is in short supply at the time. Mobility in working life is becoming increasingly important, as can be seen from the sales figures: for the first time, notebooks are selling better than desktop PCs. Wi-Fi is becoming more widespread and prices for mobile computers are also falling. After Windows Vista flopped, Microsoft achieved a blockbuster with Windows 7. However, 32-bit versions tend to remain on the shelves - the 64-bit version is much more appealing to users.
2010
In the year when the first people present themselves on Instagram, we "retreat" to the private home of our company founder, at least as far as the office is concerned. Our growth should not be slowed down by the “unsuitable” rental offer in Regensburg. As property prices are falling again for the first time, it is clear to us that we need something of our own. A warehouse in Regenstauf is purchased and the construction of our offices is in the starting blocks. A little fun fact on the side: as we also needed storage space for all our servers, storage and network devices in the meantime, we quickly rented a warehouse that had previously been used for agricultural machinery - so HP XP12000 disc arrays joined the manure spreaders.
2011
Between old and new - looking back on 2011, we are caught between a "nostalgic and modern" feeling. Do you feel the same? Here are a few examples: IBM's Watson supercomputer beats the two best human opponents at Jeopardy. Microsoft introduces Office 365, on the second-hand market 36 GB, 72 GB and 146 GB U320 SCSI HDDs are still being sold and Snapchat (back then it was called Picaboo) was launched in June 2011. Our housewarming party to mark the move into the new company building was a complete success, with many customers and suppliers invited. Even though the party turned out to be a bit boozy, one of our business partners had to have knee surgery 11 years later due to an accident on the dance floor. (Greetings go out 😉)
2012
The end of the world predicted by the Mayans did not materialise - but we were inundated by the selfie wave and the Gangnam Style video. On the broker market, the SPARC Enterprise M3000 and M4000 Unix servers went through the roof and although HP announced the 8th generation of ProLiant servers in February 2012, sales of PC2-5300F DDR2 RAM modules continued to flourish. We were able to acquire a major sportswear manufacturer as a customer and further expand our sales team.
2013
Old things go - new things come: Extreme Networks took over Enterasys, Google the robotics company Boston Dynamics and Microsoft and Sony split gaming fans into two camps with the release of the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 in the same year. Rockstar released GTA V and on 29 March 2013, one of the biggest cyberattacks in the history of the internet occurred with the DDoS attack on the Spamhaus project. These were all things that tended to pass us by at the time - because our warehouse was further expanded and professionalised. Our product range, which was dominated by HP and DELL, was greatly expanded to include manufacturers such as NetApp, IBM, Cisco and Fujitsu. And the aforementioned major manufacturers also began to take a liking to us refurbishers - for the first time, we benefited from large buybacks of hard drives and server memory.
2014
With the new release of the DDR4 RAM specification, we also had to say goodbye to the era of DELL PowerEdge 2950, HP ProLiant DL380 Gen4 and DDR2 memory. However, the DELL R series (such as the PowerEdge R710) and ProLiant tower and rack servers together with PC3-8500 RAM, as well as the DL380 Gen5 and Gen6 or the ML370 Gen5, are becoming bestsellers. And the last sales series of the EVA M6412A or NetApp DS14 MK4 series is starting, better get out quickly with the old FC discs.
2015
Suddenly everything is happening very quickly: we recently sold DDR2 memory, now the R710 has almost been written off again - our new bestseller: the DL380 Gen7. We are making our larger deals with 4 GB or 8 GB PC3-10600R, 600 or 900 SAS hard drives and blade servers using a new sales channel. Because we have become a Brokersite member in 2015!
2016
There's always a first time: after attending our first international broker meeting in 2011, we are now taking part in the European Broker Meeting in Barcelona for the first time. There we met countless new and familiar customers and suppliers and thereby gained an even better foothold in the broker market. Our ISO certification takes place in October of that year and our first own online shop with the hard to pronounce name serverandstorage-shop.com goes online.
2017
Traditions are being established: since the son of our boss joined the company, we are now truly a family business. And we also enjoyed the meetings so much last year that we now want to attend at least one international meeting a year. In 2017, we were at the European Broker Meeting in Warsaw and a similar one in Las Vegas. But in addition to the fun, there is also a lot of work for us: we are completing our in-house technical center "ETA-C" (erase, test & audit center). From now on, we have plenty of space in addition to our warehouse to be able to erase, audit and process large projects and entire data centers in-house.
2018
On 14 March 2018, the British physicist and mathematician Stephen Hawking passed away at the age of 76. The European Union's GDPR law (General Data Protection Regulation) was passed for companies on 25 May 2018 and kept us very busy. Our company name was changed to "quattroM GmbH & Co. KG" and we were able to attend the European Broker Meeting in Amsterdam and a similar meeting in London.
2019
Even in times of cloud and containers, IBM and Fujitsu presented new mainframes in autumn 2019. The first 5G networks were launched in America and AMD - once again - declared a battle for control of the CPU market against Intel. AMD "Ryzen" processors have a 15-20% market share - even though Intel had an almost uncatchable lead at the beginning of the year with an 80-85% market share in CPUs for desktop PCs and notebooks. In the server sector, Intel is unstoppable: the company has a full 95 % market share with its XEON processors. And a new trend seems to be continuing: while mobile phones are getting even bigger, PCs are getting smaller and smaller. Mini PCs in particular are enjoying great popularity.
2020
A blessing and a curse at the same time - at least for our industry. For all those who have mentally cancelled 2020 - that was the year when the global coronavirus pandemic hit... Delivery bottlenecks, chip shortages and, above all, working from home and home schooling prompted companies to resort to refurbished products. Many IT resellers recorded an extreme sales boom. And we also enjoyed a flourishing business, despite social distancing and distances to our customers. Our biggest project to date was the dismantling of Europe's 5th largest computer "EUREKA". Here we were able to fully utilise our skills and many years of experience in data erasure, logistics and refurbishing.
2021
Finally coming of age. Our 18th anniversary is being celebrated in a big way and we are delighted to be able to meet up with our customers and suppliers again at the European Broker Meeting in Budapest after a one-year break. However, we have made good use of the year in "isolation" and reprogrammed our company building for sustainability: in addition to CO₂-neutral heating, our solar system with storage enables us to be approx. 80 % self-sufficient.
2022
Our online shop was rebranded and is now called serverando.de - in general, we are improving our e-commerce activities once again. Thanks to selected partners, we have become a kind of "all-in-one" IT remarketing company. In addition to IT services, IT purchasing and sales, we now also cover the areas of software (purchasing/sales) and IT consulting (in the region).
2023
In a company there are "highs" and "lows", innovations, changes, a few wrong decisions and great successes - we can now look back on 20 years in the field of IT remarketing and would like to take this as an opportunity to thank all our customers, suppliers and partners. Thank you for accompanying us on our journey so far, for the successful cooperation, your loyalty and your trust! A good basis is based on mutual appreciation, honesty and a common goal for further development. We hope you enjoyed our "time travel" through our and the computer history.
Social Wall
With this in mind, we would like to thank everyone without whom we would not be where we are today. You are invited to leave your greetings on our social wall on our website to congratulate us on our anniversary.
Many thanks also to the Broker Site team for allowing us to publish our article here and use the pictures from past meetings.