How much data must you have before you need Cleversafe? If you have to ask ...

The Customers who Cannot Be Named

Gladwin talks of large customers who cannot be named. We reckon some of America's premier spookeries have bought Cleversafe systems. Total funding has passed $100 million but Gladwin won't say if the company is profitable or the number of customers it has or the number of product units units shipped. Our guess us that it isn't profitable yet but is close to that state. There are around 130 employees and all development is done in Chicago; there is no off-shoring.

The average Cleversafe customer has "well north of a petabyte" of Cleversafe storage deployed. Gladwin said that his potential customer base has become quite large:

"We estimate 6,000 customers will buy a petabyte of storage this year."

Some 28 petabytes of Cleversafe storage was deployed in 2013.

Cleversafe founder Chris Gladwin

Where does this leave us? We see a successful startup with funding there to take it to an IPO in 2015. It probably hasn't reached a $100 million/year revenue run rate but can see its way there. May last year saw Gladwin stepping back from the CEO slot to become the board's vice-chairman. In came John Morris as the new CEO and president, previously a Juniper EVP for world-wide field operations, with a brief to "focus on expanding Cleversafe’s go-to-market strategy and accelerating its current momentum in capitalising on the growth opportunity presented by the expanding global digital storage market."

New executives were appointed last year;, Jeffrey Giannetti joined from NetApp as SVP for global sales, with Deborah Phillips recruited from Cisco to be VP of marketing and communications. Michael Marchant came on board from Accenture to be VP and general counsel, having experience in intellectual property and global legal operations. You can scent the aroma of a company determined to head for the big time here, to sell its kit, market its kit, and protect its IP portfolio.

One thing: Gladwin runs 50-mile marathons and participates in adventure racing. He likes working on enduring, tough problems needing a lot of effort. Cleversafe needed that to get where it's going and we can't see anything ahead to trip it up. ®