Gartner: Compellent Is Fastest-Growing SAN Company

Yep. Looks like Gartner, that internationally respected IT analyzer famous for its Magic Quandrants, has reported more proof of something The Station has been writing about for a while: that second-generation SAN (storage area network) maker Compellent Technologies is the fastest-growing block-based external storage company in the world. For two years in a row, no less.

This news comes from Gartner’s “Market Share: External Controller-Based Disk Storage, Worldwide, 2004-2007” released Aug. 11 and authored by research vice president Roger Cox. Cox’s market research reveals that Compellent experienced a whopping 113 percent increase in revenue from 2006 to 2007, capturing the top growth position worldwide for its top-flight SAN.

We should all be so lucky to experience a 113 percent increase in revenue. Personal and/or business.

Compellent also won InfoWorld’s Best SAN of 2008 award earlier this year, too. eWEEK honored the company as a finalist for storage hardware systems in its Excellence Awards in 2007.

“Our growth is fueled by our innovation; we provide real-world technology answers to needs that other storage solutions simply don’t address,” Compellent chief market speaker Bruce Kornfeld said in the Gartner news release. “The result is that midsized enterprises are becoming Compellent customers rather than trying to make expensive legacy storage solutions fit their needs.”

The Station moderated a panel discussion at Compellent’s C-Drive user and partner conference in Minneapolis earlier this year, and we got a chance to take a close look at exactly what makes the company a hot one. It’s a shipshape place run by top-notch folks.

The head Compeller, CEO Phil Soran, is a classic good guy and was one of the founders of Xiotech, another outstanding storage company located down the road in suburban Eden Prairie, Minn. Xiotech, which now employs brilliant storage architect Steve Sicola as its CTO — who came to the company in the acquisition of part of Seagate’s R&D group — is also right there in terms of new-generation, cutting-edge storage tech.

Success at an organization, any organization, is always measured from the top down. When you’ve got somebody at the top who knows the business, can inspire and assess his or her people and read the market correctly, and can do all that in a classy way, then you’ve got a winning combination.

Both of these Minnesota companies, with Soran at Compellent and equally first-class CEO Casey Powell at Xiotech, have excellent leadership, IMO.

We’ll leave you with one recurring thought: So which of these companies will IBM acquire?