Talking Top Ten

Talk about timing. When CommVault Systems filed for IPO this month, we applauded here at Byte and Switch. (See CommVault's Taking the Plunge.) The reason? We were nearly done with our Top Ten Private Companies list, which went live on the site today. Check it out: Top Ten Private Companies: Spring 2006.

CommVault had been a fixture at the top of our list for over a year. Truthfully, we were tired of seeing it there. But searching our souls and sources turned up the same result every time we revamped the list namely, that no private firm was doing better in storage than CommVault.

CommVault has everything we look for in listees: It's in a hot market (backup, archiving, CDP). It's got scads of named customers and all the right partners. And its business, by all accounts, is booming.

Still, we're glad to get rid of it. If successful in its IPO, CommVault may serve as a role model for others on our list that have held back on a public bid until the time was right.

There are other potential IPO candidates on our list. As Senior Editor Dave Raffo pointed out in his recent blog, Mellanox appears to be doing well financially, and it has a lock on the InfiniBand silicon market, at least for now. Riverbed's OEM deals with Hewlett-Packard and McData are helping solidify its growth in the hot WAFS market.Other potential IPOs include EqualLogic and 3PAR. And, given its recent makeover, BlueArc could be included as well.

When it comes to our Top Ten, though, we're not just thinking about IPO candidates, though the potential to go public is always an important indicator of how a company's doing. We're also interested in market areas where there's sizeable interest or pent-up demand. So this time around, we've included makers of virtual tape libraries (Sepaton), continuous data protection (Revivio), and de-duplication software (Data Domain).

As ever, we welcome your input – and we considered the suggestions you gave us in creating this list. So if there's anything you like, dislike, or question, get in touch. We're all ears.

— Mary Jander, Site Editor, Byte and Switch

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