The Top 10 Storage Software Companies - 2002/2003
as ranked by STORAGEsearch.com
reader statistics July to mid December 2002 |
| Rank |
Company |
comments |
| 1 |
VERITAS Software |
The #1 company
last year too! A new side to VERITAS emerged for me in November 2002 when the
company put out a news story in which they claimed huge performance benefits
for Sun users who also use the VERITAS file system.
VERITAS
Software announced that companies who use VERITAS storage software with
Sun Solaris 9 experience 15 times faster computing performance and improved
system reliability compared to those who simply run the native software provided
with the operating system.
The performance acceleration market, in
which system performance is increased by software products looks like an
interesting thing to keep an eye out for in 2003. |
| 2 |
FalconStor Software |
In 2002, it
seemed that if a hardware company talked about its iSCSI plans, then FalconStor
Software was most often cited as the software partner in that relationship.
FalconStor started the year in February with an interoperability demo
with Intel at the Server I/O Conference
about which Wayne Lam, FalconStor vice president commented "FalconStor is
committed to fully support iSCSI. Our ability to demonstrate today an iSCSI
compliant solution with a full suite of enterprise storage services is evident
of our efforts."
Later, in July 2002 FalconStor
announced it has acquired IP
Metrics Software, Inc ., a Euless, TX-based provider of high
availability software and services for mission-critical networks.
FalconStor's revenues were on a positive slope compared to the
negative slant for much of the rest of IT industry. The company's revenues for
the third quarter of 2002 increased by 20% sequentially and 13% compared with
the same period the year before. |
| 3 |
Arkeia
|
Arkeia's focus
is the Linux market, and they have over 90,000 users worldwide. Recently, in
November 2002, Arkeia
released a state-of-the-art disaster recovery module for automatic restoration
of lost data. The module offers fast, reliable and easy re-creation of Linux
clients or backup servers even if a machine is stolen or destroyed. The module
rebuilds a backed up client or the Arkeia backup server from scratch with a
simple bootable CD solution. |
| 4 |
BakBone Software |
Earlier this
year I commented in our news pages about BakBone's financial results, and
speculated that they might be on the early part of a classic hockey stick
growth curve. For most companies, that kind of growth is wishful thinking, and
often appears in the first draft of business plans presented to venture
capitalists. In BakBone's case, the high growth rate continued in later
quarters. For example in
November
2002, BakBone Software announced 76% year on year revenue growth for
the fiscal quarter ended September 30, 2002.
Commenting about the company's second year in our top 10 storage
software companies list, Andrew Unsworth, Managing Director EMEA, BakBone
Software said "In an economic environment proving difficult for many
storage companies, BakBone has shown yet another year of continued growth. 2002
has showed significant customer wins and continued success in markets throughout
the world. We are thrilled that this success has been recognised by the industry
and are proud to be listed in STORAGEsearch.com's top 10." |
| 5 |
LiveVault |
2002 was a
year of rebirth for the web based backup and data protection industry. Following
two years in which half the companies in this segment went out of business, the
survivors were companies which knew what they were doing, and knew how to
satisfy customer needs.
In October 2002
LiveVault
Corporation announced that the Progress Company is working with LiveVault
to provide online backup and recovery services for Progress-based business
applications. After evaluation by Progress, LiveVault is now available to more
than 2,000 ISVs for resale to the more than 50,000 end-user companies worldwide
that run their businesses on Progress-based applications. LiveVault's fully
managed online backup and recovery service provides unparalleled protection for
Progress-based applications by automatically and continuously backing up server
data to a secure, off-site
Iron Mountain
facility, where it is available for immediate recovery in the event of human
error, virus, disaster or system failure. |
| 6 |
Computer Associates |
Computer
Associates, founded in 1976, has reported $2.99 Billion of revenue in the last
12 months, and as you'd expect for a company that size, CA works with a lot of
other companies in the industry. In fact most of the news stories we ran about
CA in 2002 were from CA's partners, competitors and market research reports,
rather than stories originated by Computer Associates themselves.
In
December 2002 Computer
Associates International, Inc. (NYSE: CA) announced that it intends to sell
approximately $400 million principal amount of Convertible Senior Notes due 2009
through a private offering to qualified institutional buyers under Rule 144A and
offshore under Regulation S. |
| The companies
below are all new entrants to our top 10 list this year. |
| 7 |
Legato Systems |
In May 2002,
Legato acquired OTG
Software, one of the companies featured in our top 10 list of 2001. More
recently, in December 2002 - Legato joined the rush into the Linux backup and
recovery market by
announcing
support for IBM's eServer zSeries.
""Though there are
other backup and recovery alternatives for IBM eServer zSeries running Linux,
the others lack the server/storage node functionality that is offered by LEGATO
NetWorker for Linux on the Mainframe," commented David L. Beamer, executive
vice president and COO, LEGATO Systems." |
| 8 |
StoreAge Networking
Technologies |
"Storage
Virtualization" was a term we saw in more news stories during 2002. And
vendors were quick to point out that not only could users save time and money
by using virtualization in their storage networks, but also backup speeds could
be faster too. StoreAge Networking Technologies announced many new partnerships
this year which was the first complete year of sales for its new products. The
company, founded in 1999 has received over $28 million of equity investment. |
| 9 |
Invio Software |
Invio Software
launched its first products in
March 2002 -
the Invio Storage Practice Manager™, Invio Active Practices™ and the
Invio Storage Practice Foundry™. Since then the company has been working to
demonstrate compatibility with other SAN infrastructure vendors. |
| 10 |
Astrum Software |
In May 2002,
Astrum appointed a new president and CEO. Robert Infantino, Astrum's founder
commented that the company's strategy was working towards establishing "...Astrum
as the market leader in SRM."
Certainly making a debut in this
year's top 10 storage software companies list makes that kind of claim more than
credible. |
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