Netezza Makes Its Intentions Public

Enterprise Storage Forum content and product recommendations are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More.

Data warehouse appliance firm Netezza is the latest company to ride the storage IPO wave.

The Netezza Performance Server integrates database, server and storage platforms and interacts with external systems to acquire and retain raw data, receive query instructions and provide analytical results. The data warehouse acts as a data repository for an enterprise, aggregating information from many departments and enabling analytics through the querying of the data to deliver results. The appliances store from 3TB to 100TB of data.

Its competitors include EMC, HP, IBM, Oracle, Sun, Sybase and NCR’s Teradata.

The niche has been kind to Netezza. The company has shipped more than 200 appliances to 87 customers, among them Amazon.com, in the process growing revenues from $14 million to $80 million in three years. Sales rose nearly 50 percent last year.

But the company remains a long way from profitability. Netezza lost $14 million in its fiscal 2007, which ended Jan. 31. That’s down from a $20 million loss in fiscal 2006 attributable to common shareholders. The company had $5 million in cash as of Jan. 31 and an accumulated deficit of about $81 million.

Netazza hopes to raise $100 million in its IPO. The stock will trade on the Nasdaq under the symbol “NTZA.”

The company’s investors include Matrix Partners, Charles River Partnership, Battery Ventures, Sequoia Capital and Meritech Capital. Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley are the lead managers for the offering.

Dataupia used the occasion of Netezza’s S-1 filing to trumpet its own entry into the field. Foster Hinshaw, former CTO and co-founder of Netezza and current CEO of Dataupia, said in a statement that “The appliance model has now been proven with rapid adoption across the networking, security and storage infrastructure industries. … Netezza’s success in the market validates the need for this model. However, there is much more that can be done to democratize the technology and business benefits of data warehousing and make them available to users across the entire enterprise.”

Hinshaw said he plans to do just that with his latest venture.

The last year has been a good one for storage IPOs, with CommVault, Isilon, Mellanox, Double-Take and Riverbed all going public.

Back To Enterprise Storage Forum

Paul Shread
Paul Shread
eSecurity Editor Paul Shread has covered nearly every aspect of enterprise technology in his 20+ years in IT journalism, including an award-winning series on software-defined data centers. He wrote a column on small business technology for Time.com, and covered financial markets for 10 years, from the dot-com boom and bust to the 2007-2009 financial crisis. He holds a market analyst certification.

Get the Free Newsletter!

Subscribe to Cloud Insider for top news, trends, and analysis.

Latest Articles

15 Software Defined Storage Best Practices

Software Defined Storage (SDS) enables the use of commodity storage hardware. Learn 15 best practices for SDS implementation.

What is Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)?

Fibre Channel Over Ethernet (FCoE) is the encapsulation and transmission of Fibre Channel (FC) frames over enhanced Ethernet networks, combining the advantages of Ethernet...

9 Types of Computer Memory Defined (With Use Cases)

Computer memory is a term for all of the types of data storage technology that a computer may use. Learn more about the X types of computer memory.