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.
