Mendocino's Mum on Rumored Closure

Time may be running out for once-promising CDP supplier Mendocino Software.

Sources at the company, including CEO Kathleen Holmgren, a former Sun storage exec who joined Mendocino in November 2007, did not respond to requests for comment at press time. But rumor has it the doors are all but closed and the assets are up for sale in the wake of a failure to raise more VC funding.

"They didn't get their money. The employees who haven't left already are leaving next week," said one industry source outside the company, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Mendocino has already sought help in selling its assets from a California consulting firm that specializes in technology "fire sales," the source said.

Since its founding in 2003, Mendocino has garnered $33 million in two funding rounds. Investors include Accel Partners, Advent International, Foundation Capital, and Mayfield. Requests for comment from various investor sources also went unanswered at press time.

A key Mendocino partner is also keeping mum: Hewlett-Packard, which OEMs Mendocino's InfiniView package as the HP StorageWorks Continuous Information Capture (CIC) solution, had not responded to requests for comment on the Mendocino rumor at press time.How did things get to this pass? Over the past few months, Mendocino appeared to be clipping along: There were additional customers and VMware compatibility announced in June 2007; a new release of InfiniView in October 2007; and the new CEO in November.

A second source outside Mendocino, who also requested anonymity, thinks Mendocino was passed over as competing startups were bought up between 2006 and the end of the 2007. EMC bought Kashya in May 2006; Symantec swallowed Revivio in November 2006.

"They were sort of left standing," said the source. "The industry had moved on from CDP as a standalone solution. And they were never able to deliver replication with CDP. By 2007, it was apparent that customers wanted that."

Indeed, despite adding a host of features, including dual CDP and "near CDP" capabilities, to InfiniView, Mendocino found itself outstripped by startups like InMage before it could get its promised CDP-plus-replication out the door.

There may yet be a happy ending here. But as of now, there's a deafening silence.Have a comment on this story? Please click "Discuss" below. If you'd like to contact Byte and Switch's editors directly, send us a message.