Bocada Gets New Boss

Backup reporting vendor Bocada has a new CEO -- and an eye out for new technologies that can extend its product line.

Former marketing VP Drake Pruitt confirmed to Byte and Switch that he is taking over as CEO in a move the Bellevue, Washington-based company will likely announce Friday. He replaces Mark Silverman, Bocada's CEO since it began in 1999. Silverman remains Bocada's chairman.

Pruitt says Silverman will work on "corporate development activity," while the new CEO handles day-to-day operations. And apparently, "corporate development activity" means M&A and partnership activity.

While Bocada, like any private storage company today, is a possible acquisition target, Pruitt says it's more likely that it will acquire, or at least partner, with smaller companies to expand its product base.

"There's a lot going on in the market and a lot of tea leaves being read," Pruitt says. "We've been getting inquiries from smaller companies who realize getting to market, raising funds, and growing through their own channel is difficult if not impossible. We're going to be opportunistic about that."Pruitt, who has been with Bocada since 2001, says the company has about 200 customers, including ExxonMobil, General Motors, Honeywell, Sprint, the U.S. Army, and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

An industry source familiar with the company says it has had at least two profitable quarters and a much lower burn rate of its $20 million in funding than many startups. The 66-person company's last funding round was for $9.5 million in January of 2005. (See Bocada Scores $9.5M.)

Pruitt says he is not actively looking for funding, but would consider it to grow the company. "The way we're operating now, the requirement for funding is not staring us in the face," he says. "If we do go for funding, it will be for investment -- not inside the company but outside. We can add functionality, extend our product platform, and look at other problems for our product to solve."

Bocada and competitors such as WysDM, Illuminator Software, ServerGraph, and Tek-Tools sprung up to fill a gap in backup reporting left by the large backup software vendors such as Symantec/Veritas, EMC Legato, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and CA. They monitor, report on, and troubleshoot the often onerous tape backup process. (See Startups Strive to Save Backup.)

Analyst Brad O'Neill of the Taneja Group thinks there are several directions Bocada can go if it wants to add functionality through partnerships or acquisition. He sees data classification and indexing, analytics, and storage resource management (SRM) as good fits."Bocada could look at a lot of areas that augment data protection management," O'Neill says. "They could think about adding value to index content, they could look at providing analytical tools and deeper root cause analysis for data protection. Looking wider, they could move into the production storage side of the house as well, moving into areas traditionally covered by SRM vendors."

The last trend has already begun among other players. Tek-Tools has combined backup reporting with SRM in its Profiler since it started shipping in 2002. (See Tek-Tools Debuts -- Again.) HP integrates Backup Manager into its Storage Essentials SRM suite, and BakBone this week included disk utilization and capacity planning in its upgraded NetVault Report Manager.

At least one user can testify to the need for these kinds of improvements. "We double the amount of data in primary storage about every 18 months," says Chip Olsen, systems engineer of Fruitland, Idaho-based manufacturing firm Woodgrain Millwork. "When you double storage requirements that fast, it gets kind of hairy to keep up with." Olsen uses BakBone's new report manager for consolidated backup reports on servers scattered across 20 remote sites, as well as for tape and disk utilization.

Regardless of where Bocada goes in its product strategy it's clear that storage administrators are paying closer attention to backup reports -- although not necessarily as a standalone product.

Indeed, it's questionable whether backup reporting and monitoring will remain distinct "point products" relative to the larger storage environment. EMC sells a Backup Advisor for its Legato through an OEM deal with WysDM, and smaller backup vendors CommVault and BakBone recently enhanced their reporting capabilities. (See EMC Makes Legato 'Wyser', CommVault Ratchets Up Reporting, and BakBone Beefs Up Reporting.)Jeff Mahols, systems integration manager for Quincy, Massachusetts-based benefits provider CitiStreet, doesnt use a standalone reporting product despite having about 100 Tbytes of data on HP SANs and tape libraries. He believes HP Storage Essentials could eventually fit his needs for SRM and backup reports.

"HP is moving forward quickly with backup modules, monitoring backup jobs, giving you statistics," he says. "We're hoping by the time we start embracing that technology, it will be built into... [Storage Essentials]."

— Dave Raffo, News Editor, Byte and Switch