One thing: Chaparral's CEO since 2001, Victor Perez, won't be staying on board, but plans to retire. Chaparral's controller was a selling point for Dot Hill, which now has a controller supply agreement with Infortrend Technology Inc. Indeed, Dot Hill execs admit trying to acquire Infortrend, to no avail, before sealing the Chaparral deal. "Owning our own controller technology will allow us to fully control our own destiny," said Dot Hill CEO Jim Lambert on a call with financial analysts today. Chaparral, which also makes SAN systems and storage routers, has about 19 patents and patents pending on its controller. In contrast, Dot Hill has fewer than ten.Lambert concedes the financial community has criticized Dot Hill in the past for not owning its own technology, as well as for its reliance on Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) for most of its revenue.