JNI Corp. (Nasdaq: JNIC), whose high-speed fiber products connect electronic information networks, has had a high-speed ride on the stock market since closing its first trading day Oct. 27, 1999, at $38.75. By Nov. 3, it had topped out at $114.75. Since then, the stock has zigzagged lower to about half that high, closing at $61.13 near press time. Market capitalization is $1.3 billion.

JNI was started as Jaycor Networks Inc. in April 1993 by Terry Flanagan as a business unit of San Diego defense contractor Jaycor, where he had worked in electronics and since 1977. It became a separate company in 1997, with Flanagan as CEO. The company’s primary products are host bus adapters for personal computers and Sun Micro compatible systems.

JNI designs and supplies Fibre Channel (an internationally accepted term distinguishing the process from fiber optics) hardware and software to connect servers and data storage devices, forming storage area networks. The fibers act as a conduit linking storage devices together at an extremely high speed: 1 gigabit/second or 200 megabytes/second. No disk drive is fast enough to keep up with that, the company says.

When the business unit began, there were just four employees; today the workforce numbers 135 at its Towne Centre Drive facility. Sales over the last 12 months are $40.2 million.

With that rapid growth, Chris Wildermuth, director of corporate communications, tells why the company went public: "It was time for the company to make its next step from a start-up emerging company to a growth company. We needed the funding and the discipline provided by the funding. We’re in a market that’s growing at 100 percent a year. That's just a ridiculous growth rate."

— Terence J. Burke