Top Ten Private Storage Networking Companies: Page 17 of 23

Clever or what? Because of this patent-pending stuff, the VCs and analysts
reckon Scale Eight has a headstart and will go the distance. Its challenge
will be to convince potential customers that its service is better and
cheaper than its competitors, which are popping up like daisies (see
Storage Services Sprout in Europe).

Scale Eight CEO Richard Watts sold his previous company ConvergeNet, a
storage and networking company, to Dell Computer Corp. (Nasdaq:
DELL) in 1999 for $340 million. Scale Eight’s founder and CTO, Joshua Coates, was an
engineer at Inktomi Corp.
(Nasdaq: INKT) and is considered a genius among scaleable clustering experts.

Another important feather in its cap is its VC roster – Oak Investment
Partners, Crown
Advisors, InterWest
Partners, and Center
Point Venture Partners. It’s raised $31 million in two rounds from these folks
and hopes to get a final round under its belt by the end of the third
quarter 2001, before testing the IPO waters.

It’s worth noting that Gartner/Dataquest estimates the SSP (storage service provider) market will be
worth $8.8 billion by 2003. A pretty fat piñata, in other words.

Three’s company?