Data protection bods Bocada list dog on senior management team

Look, first things first, we're not making this up. Enterprise data protection company Bocada has one Tommy, er, Bocada listed as its director of employee well-being. And while Tommy may very well have experience in "enterprise, data storage, software development, sales, and support", he is nevertheless a member of the species Canis (lupus) familiaris.

Oh, and there's no CEO listed either. Nancy Hurley, who was the CEO, said; "I am no longer the CEO at Bocada. The board and I had some differences about the direction of the company."

Kathryn Otto is listed as the CFO and Kim Read as the chief operating officer. And that's it as far as Bocada's top management team is concerned - apart from "Tommy-Bocada" (why the hyphen? – subs). There's no VP for sales - Sales VP Mike Ascher left in June, while the product engineering veep Bruce Leban left the company last year.

Read, one of the original founding employees, was promoted from chief administrative officer to the COO slot in June. Otto has been Bocada's CFO since December 2006, so there is a depth of exec experience there.

As for its canine executive, Tommy-Bocada's role is described as so by Bocada:

Tommy oversees the well-being of all employees at Bocada. Prior to joining the team, Tommy developed his socialization skills at doggie day-camp, perfected his napping techniques, and also found time to play fetch daily. Recently, Tommy decided to pursue a career in the business world as the Director of Employee Well-Being at Bocada. Tommy is responsible for daily employee nuzzles, organising hallway fetch sessions, and maintaining an overall sense of calmness throughout the company. Outside of the office, Tommy enjoys running with his human, chasing squirrels, swimming, and playing with his tennis ball.

This is a US corporation we're talking about here, by the way.

Like the senior management, the board is a pretty sparse organisation. Bocada's chairman is Mark Silverman of Catamount Ventures. He co-founded Bocada and has served in the past as its president and CEO. Greg Gottesman, who joined in April this year, is a second board member and represents Madrona, a venture capital group.

There are two board observers: Pete Higgins of venture capital firm Second Avenue Partners, and Jed Smith of tech VCs Catamount Ventures.

Bocada was founded in 1999. By 2005 the company had achieved $9.5m in C-round funding. A year later it scooped up $4m in D-round funding. Madrona and Catamount Ventures both participated in the C and D-rounds. The details of the A- and B-rounds are not available.

Bocada's last substantial press release was issued in April, when the company informed the world that it had updated its Prism software suite to v8.0, adding improved CommVault, TSM and VMware support (slide deck). It's now looking at monitoring backup to the cloud.

Once upon a time, there were three data protection management and reporting companies: Aptare, Bocada and WysDM.

Aptare is still going strong - and has a full management team without a canine presence. EMC bought WysDM and calls the acquired technology Data Protection Advisor. ®

Bootnote

Bocada is not answering enquiries by e-mail. The sales phone line goes to a mailbox which is full. The customer support phone line is answered and a person on that line said the company is still operational. We are trying to find out more and will post an update on Bocada's doggy dalliances as soon as we can.