What's in Store for Compellent?

“We’ve been able to do offsite data recovery for quite a while—it’s just been very expensive to do,” Dusek says. “Since Compellent just moves the changes in your data, which is about 10 percent of the data on your network, you really reduce the cost of having a second copy. It used to be you would have to have a $30,000 box at both ends—that’s $60,000 of gear that Compellent just eliminated.” Compellent also incorporates cheaper connection lines, Dusek notes, reducing the need for companies to invest in more expensive pipes, which can cost $10,000 a month.

Dream Team

Compellent’s product has garnered industry applause for uniting many previously incompatible hardware components, like different disk drives and connectors, into one package, and for eliminating a lot of the steps, hassles, and guesswork of managing storage. Last February, a review in the tech publication InfoWorld noted that Compellent’s system “offers features available only on million-dollar systems a year ago” at a starting price of $49,500, and that “anyone planning a SAN in the 2 TB to 100 TB range should investigate this system.” Last June, Connecticut-based IT research and advisory firm Gartner picked Compellent as one of five top up-and-coming storage companies at a conference Gartner held in Florida.

“The theme of the [Gartner] presentation was that innovation in storage is coming from new players,” Soran says. “A lot of what’s happening now in the computing industry for storage is a replay of the issues that happened in the mainframe space.” Soran knew that space well, having held several executive positions, including storage-system specialist, during 10 years at IBM. Guider’s background includes work on a PC superserver, SANs, and the image-reconstruction machine for General Electric’s CAT scanner. Aszmann, who has 30 years’ experience in the storage industry (including a stint at Control Data), did pioneering work on data storage, including SANs. “Our large-systems backgrounds come in handy and give us the ability to really think through the architecture of a distributed world and come up with something elegant,” Soran says.

Back when Soran and his partners started Compellent, they got a lot of press because of their ability to raise cash in a depressed market for start-up investments, and because they wouldn’t say what they were up to. “People started calling us,” Soran recalls. “They said, ‘I’m curious,’ ‘I’d like to get involved,’ ‘I’d like to see if we can help.’” After about 100 such inquiries, the trio saw an opportunity to refine both the product and its opportunities for distribution before its official launch. Says Soran, “We started taking some of those callers and saying, ‘How’d you like to come in as part of a group and give us feedback?’”

Many in the group, called the Compellent Customer Council, or C-3, became customers, and the council (with a constantly rotating membership) continues to offer product input twice a year. Soran says it’s a way to build IT dream lists right into the product: “When we show them what they wanted at the last meeting now in the product, they just freak out.”

Besides getting regular feature input from their C-3 group, Soran and company decided Compellent would differentiate itself from competitors by selling exclusively through resellers. “If you want to invest in a neat new company, everybody focuses on the technology,” Soran says. “But the bigger risk is, how are you going to sell it?” Dennis Johnson, Compellent’s executive vice president in charge of sales, suggested the company could save money, shorten its sales cycle, and earn reseller trust by not setting up its own direct sales force. Compellent now relies on its 105 resellers to bring its product to their customers. The resellers also provide installation and customization features and other services on site.