B&S Top Ten Refreshed

NEW YORK CITY, August Time for iced lattes, air conditioning, and weekend trips to the shore. Time to grill hot dogs on the patio of the red-brick Tribeca HQ of Byte and Switch. What better time for a fresh take on the Top Ten Private Companies list?

Cool yer jets. We are aware that last time we updated this list, snowflakes were falling. Apologies! And no excuses offered, except that covering storage networking's often a bit more than a full-time job.

That's good news. Despite ongoing budget constraints, storage is growing (see Survey: Storage Spending Will Slow). Startup funding is up, a market for services is taking off, and there's plenty of M&A, if not IPO (see One Way Out).

This isn't to say the livin's easy this summer. Far from it. Buyers are tight-fisted, some companies are finding the federal market's not all it was cracked up to be, and even Hopkinton's feeling the pinch (see EMC Guides Low ).

What's more, the shape of storage networking is shifting. Indeed, it seems to be shrinking. Virtualization, blade servers, clustering, optimization of WAN bandwidth and file transfer, and a range of other techniques aim to simplify storage, even as its importance in the data center grows.And that leads us to our Top Ten. In this go-round, we present what we think are the companies most in tune with the forward progress of the industry. Of course, they have to be nifty businesses as well. How do we determine this? Our basic criteria for consideration are as follows. Each company must be:

Beyond these basics, it's our own subjective evaluation, plain and simple.

Bear in mind that this is a list of 10, and as such is a snapshot of industry trends. Absence from this list doesn't mean we at Byte and Switch don't think you have captivating products or services.

Conversely, presence on this list doesn't guarantee a firm won't make our Bit Bucket next time around. In fact, as usual, half of those that made our last list are now rattling in that receptacle.

So without further ado, enjoy our latest list. See you on the Message Board!For a writeup on each company, click on its name below:

Table 1: Top Ten Private Storage Networking Companies

— The Editors, Byte and Switch