Pivot3 Puzzle Probed

Like a red flag to a bull, the term stealth mode is all that's needed to attract tons of unwanted attention, as Pivot3 Inc. has been finding out. This two-year-old startup wants to maintain a low profile until its patents are approved, but its cover is gradually dissolving to reveal what could be an interesting new storage software company.

For software is what Pivot3's working on, according to Lee Caswell, VP of marketing and sales. In fact, the name Pivot3 comes from what the Spring, Texas, startup's founders view as the third pivot on which the IT environment is based -- storage. (The other two are computing and networking, Caswell says.)

"We have a software infrastructure product for storage... fully architected," he says, adding that Pivot3's primary market will be OEMs.

Caswell, who formerly worked at QLogic Corp. (Nasdaq: QLGC), isn't saying much more. He won't confirm published reports that state Pivot3 obtained several million dollars in funding, though he will acknowledge the startup got funding from one VC firm, identity undisclosed, in November 2003, one year to the month after its founding.

So what more can be gleaned above and beyond Caswell's good-natured but cryptic revelations? There are a few tempting tidbits:

Tidbits, but not enough for a meal. Without more info, it's tough to tell whether Pivot3 will vie with storage virtualization software makers, the list of which grows longer by the week and now includes EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC), Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ), IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM), and Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW), as well as a slew of startups like Troika. Whatever it's doing, though, Pivot3 can bet the curious will come calling regularly.

Mary Jander, Site Editor, Byte and Switch