20 RED-HOT, PRE-IPO COMPANIES IN 2015 B2B TECH - From Actifio to Vormetric, IDG Connect editorial director Martin Veitch surveys companies with ...
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20 RED-HOT, PRE-IPO
COMPANIES IN 2015
B2B TECH
From Actifio to Vormetric, IDG Connect editorial director Martin Veitch
surveys companies with good prospects that have yet to float20 Pre-IPO Tech Companies 2015 IDG Connect Introduction In November 2014, IDG Connect published my inaugural red-hot, pre-IPO companies list which examined my pick of 20 companies that were (a) privately held and (b) had a positive outlook. I made no pretensions to scientific rigour but selected the companies on the basis of background research and a decent amount of time spent with at least one senior executive at each company to give a fair view of its chances. Among the factors I sought out as signs of promise were: strong management; a clear and attractive vision; funding; differentiated products or services; the good opinion of significant experienced influencers; and a buoyant area of activity. I also added in a solid dose of ‘hunch’ based on over 25 years’ experience meeting technology leaders and writing about their companies’ inner workings. A list like this is, of necessity, a snapshot. An attempt at an empirical study might have included many others such as Dropbox, Square and Atlassian but there has to be a cut-off somewhere and I have plumped for human interaction over desk research, distant third-party connections and hearsay. I make no bones of the fact that this was very much a personal viewpoint. Now, never one to change a winning formula, this year’s follow-up clones the 2014 format. It presents an A to Z list with no weight given to one company over another. And I should emphasise again, that this is not a paper that attempts to tip the success or otherwise of companies’ chances on the public markets. I certainly don’t believe that all of these companies will eventually float although I contend that they all have a chance to do so. Some, as backed up by last year’s list, will sell out to rivals and peers, others will be taken in by private-equity partners and some might fail altogether. The process of becoming a successful company is evolutionary and there are many different paths that can be taken. A few, like SAS Institute, stay private for the long run. Many others are ‘built to flip’ and are ready-made for a fast sale or are unavoidably drawn into the lures of a predator. A few, like Dell, go public and then retract and recently we have seen big tech stocks like HP and Symantec announce plans to split into component parts. But many of the most interesting set their sights on an initial public offering to raise funds for the long-term, to reward staff and to bask in the limelight of the markets. These last companies are at the heart of the technology economy but, with venture funding having been at extraordinary levels for a few years now, some of the strongest have the luxury of biding their time and waiting for the perfect moment to launch. So, all that’s left to say is best of luck to one and all of them.
20 Pre-IPO Tech Companies 2015 IDG Connect
Actifio Anaplan
For: For:
Well-funded, addresses a pain point in a space Well-funded, focused on a profitable, important
where current backup incumbents aren’t well niche
loved
Against: Against:
Competing against stacks and their sales tactics Some prospects will always lean to ‘stack’ providers
won’t be easy
Interview: CEO, Ash Ashutosh Interview: CEO and CTO
A ctifio is handsomely bankrolled with over
$207m at its disposal after a March 2014 round
pulled in $100m.
W hat’s this? A hot British software startup
that’s not doing something ‘webby’ and isn’t
in London? Yes, and its global R&D is based near
York in England’s north country (although
A storage and virtualisation company at heart, confusingly it’s actual headquarters are San
based in the US (Waltham, Massachusetts) and Francisco). Anaplan is unusual in a few
under Indian leadership, like Nutanix, PernixData other ways too.
and Nimble Storage, Actifio matches the photo-fit
for the new datacentre disruptors. Number one, it’s trying to disrupt the Excel
hegemony where Microsoft’s spreadsheet is asked
Its USP is what it calls ‘Copy Data Management/ to do pretty well everything that it wasn’t created
Virtualization’ by which it means splitting data from to do – in this case keeping tabs on business
infrastructure to improve resilience, lower costs planning.
and provide built-in backup. CEO Ash Ashutosh
sees the company as the link between two new Number two, it has strong funding for a European
types of company: those redefining infrastructure company, with about $150m raised so far and
(such as the disruptors listed above) and those illustrious customers to match including Air Asia,
redefining applications like Salesforce.com, Expedia, British Land, HP, Kimberly-Clark, McAfee
NetSuite and Workday. and Pandora.
Its core intellectual property is in a deep Number three, it uses an Anglo-French
understanding of the workings of applications and management combination with Brit CTO, Michael
you might think of it as an application process logic Gould, working alongside the effusive Frederic
expert wedded to a super-sized enterprise version Laluyaux as CEO.
of Apple’s Time Machine for backup and restore.
With a run rate already at over $100m in revenues
Its other advantage is that the traditional per year, Anaplan might not be a household name
incumbents in the enterprise backup space (many and probably never will be, but it’s being carefully
of them acquired and rolled up into giant software watched by the giant software stack operators.
stacks) are seen by many CIOs and CTOs as blood-
sucking leeches and innovation-free zones. Those companies are also highly acquisitive of
course but a future IPO would make sense if
The latest funding valued Actifio at over $1bn and, management and investors can hold their nerve.
if market conditions are right, 2015 could see an The UK’s most important business software
IPO. company since Autonomy? Maybe.20 Pre-IPO Tech Companies 2015 IDG Connect
BloomReach Boundary
For: For:
Desirable market with customers who itch for new Modern alternative to incumbents in a space that
insights needs refreshing
Against: Against:
Many silver bullets have already been promised in Buyer inertia
eRetail
Interview: CEO, Raj De Datta Interview: CEO, Gary Read
C ompanies attempting to be the great new
thing in eRetail come along with the frequency
of London buses and their chances of successfully
B oundary is an IT monitoring company that wants
to do for its chosen space what Salesforce.com
did for CRM. That is, provide a modern, cloud-based,
arriving at a desirable destination in a timely user-friendly product that will be beloved by users...
manner are similarly mixed. and lead to enormous financial success.
To tip the winners it’s perhaps better to look at In April 2014, Boundary nearly doubled its funding
customer bases than get confused by whizz- to over $41m and in so doing enhanced its chances
bang technologies and promises. With that in of challenging the long-term incumbents in the
mind, BloomReach has pulled in Staples, fashion space such as CA, BMC, HP, IBM and Quest Software
trendsters Forever 21 and Guess, and foodie nexus (now part of Dell). Those companies won’t be easy
Williams-Sonoma. to usurp but then Salesforce knocked Siebel off its
perch.
Chasing growth, the San Francisco company set up
a UK office in 2014 and has $41m in funding. Many of the new wave of companies that have made
life difficult for segment leaders are led by people
who know where bodies are buried. Salesforce CEO,
Marc Benioff, was formerly an Oracle executive
and ServiceNow founder Fred Luddy was CTO at
Peregrine Systems, for example. Boundary is no
exception as British CEO, Gary Read, has eaten the
monitoring pizza and worn the monitoring T-shirt at
Boole & Babbage, BMC, RiverSoft and Nimsoft.
Read’s challenge today is to reinvent the category,
giving it a modern sluicing for a complex new era
where companies will mix and match capabilities
on-premises and off-premise across global, hybrid
environments - but still want a single cockpit on all
activities with reporting that make sense to non-
techies too.
Enterprises and service providers make up
Boundary’s customer roster and range from Jive,
Expedia and Okta to Adobe and Outbrain – not bad
for a company founded in December 2010. Read
aspires to an eventual IPO although the company
and market are still growing. If Boundary can match
ambition to execution it should have an outstanding
chance of success.
On a minor note, its logo is clever in concept but
illegible…20 Pre-IPO Tech Companies 2015 IDG Connect
Cirba Cloudera
For: For:
Timely solution to a pressing challenge for Able to invest freely in growth; tight with the
datacentre owners/operators world’s biggest chip maker
Against: Against:
Has been a slow burn so far and is dwarfed by Closeness to Intel might not make it universally
others in the datacentre automation space popular
Interview: Chief Strategic Officer,
Interview: CEO and CTO
Mike Olson
A t the ripe old age of 15, Cirba is no new
game in town by software standards but its
time might have come. The Canadian company
E ven among those mentally exhausted by – and
insanely envious of – the vast funding rounds
that have characterised tech VC over the last
likens itself to the computer game Tetris – but couple of years, Cloudera sent jaws falling in 2014
that doesn’t mean that it is intensely annoying when it announced Intel was taking an 18% stake
and beloved of dweebs. Instead it provides in this Palo Alto, California bright spark for $740m.
the automation capability to allot time and That took total investments to over $1bn and
capacity to virtual machines in heavily virtualised overnight made Cloudera appear to be the B2B
environments. And of course, most well-run world’s riposte to the WhatsApp valuation when
datacentres are going to be heavily virtualised Facebook agreed to buy the messaging firm.
today – and they will be even more so tomorrow.
Intel was buying a chunk of a company at the heart
In recent years Cirba has bolstered partnerships of what’s going on in the Hadoop/Big Data action.
and its status as an ‘indie’ makes it appeal to those And, just as it did when it took a lucrative share in
reluctant to be locked in to a single supplier’s VMware several years earlier, Intel was betting that
environment. However, to capitalise on its what we see today are just the skirmishes in what
opportunity it may have to invest in marketing and will turn out to be a brutal battle for control of the
expansion. The company last raised funds in 2012 next wave of critical analysis tools. In Cloudera’s
and has collected $32m in total. It is also likely to case the result will be decision-support systems
be an attractive partnering (and perhaps more) capable of asking the world’s biggest ‘what if’
target for the well-known firms duking it out for questions.
datacentre automation clout.
Cloudera’s biggest rival, Hortonworks, on the other
hand is proudly going its own way and has already
put IPO wheels in motion. Both can win of course
but the company that becomes number-one in the
enterprise stands to become very large indeed.
Some compare what’s happening here with the
tussle for RDBMS leadership 20-odd years ago and
speak of the winner becoming the next Oracle. If
they’re right we might one day talk about Intel and
other investors getting a bargain.
The sheer heft of these investments points clearly
to an eventual IPO but then again Cloudera now
has plenty of time to invest. And money of course
– lots of it.20 Pre-IPO Tech Companies 2015 IDG Connect
Coupa Devicescape
For: For:
Market is ready for a new approach to spend Interesting IP and concept
management
Against: Against:
Inertia among stack users and freebie offers from Slow progress to date
rival vendors
Interview: CEO, Rob Bernshteyn Interview: CEO, David Fraser
C oupa is a spend-management company that
ticks a lot of boxes in matrices that correlate
‘characteristics’ with ‘success’ today. It’s cloud/
S an Francisco-based Devicescape is maybe an
odd company for a list like this. It’s not a startup,
having been around since 2000, and its USP is
subscription-based, it operates in a dusty category slightly offbeat and unusual as it harnesses WiFi in
that could use some sprucing up and it’s got hospitality spaces to deliver bolstered connectivity
decent funding – $89m to date. to devices where cellular network speeds can’t cut
it.
You could go further: it’s young, having been
founded in 2006, and it’s Silicon Valley Californian, You might call the approach scavenging although
with a San Mateo base, that puts it within whistling the company prefers ‘crowdsharing’ – and despite
distance of the three companies it would like to a slow start in its current guise, things may be
join in cloud computing application royalty – looking up. Devicescape only won its first carrier
Salesforce.com, Workday and NetSuite. customer in 2010 and then waited until 2013 when
10 came along at once.
Coupa CEO Rob Bernshteyn won his spurs at
Siebel, SuccessFactors and in consulting, where The formula is attractive: users get faster links,
he studied earlier efforts at spend-management hospitality bosses get to market to prospective
such as Ariba. His big vision at Coupa is to guests, carriers don’t get crunched on capacity. It’s
democratise and pluralise spending so more of it been a while coming, but Devicescape might have
falls into the hands of non-specialists rather than found its time.
power users, but also that that spending process
becomes transparent, auditable and can be swiftly
authorised.
Bernshteyn sees the spend-management market
opportunity as being in the $15-20bn range.
Biting off a few per cent of that pie would make
Coupa a sizeable outfit and give the company the
opportunity to join its icons. An October 2014
partnership with NetSuite suggests it is already
becoming an accepted companion of the online
aristocracy.20 Pre-IPO Tech Companies 2015 IDG Connect
DocuSign ForgeRock
For: For:
Already changing the authorisation of transactions Deep enterprise experience in identity
management
Against: Against:
A security compromise could be traumatic Competition comes from all angles
Interview: CEO, Keith Krach Interview: CEO, Mike Ellis
Advisor, Scott Mcnealy
T hat DocuSign’s electronic signature platform is
rapidly becoming a de facto standard globally
is backed up by the fact that the most recently
Identity management in all its forms has such a
large field of startups and veterans that it has
begun to resemble the famous Grand National
announced funding round – $115m, taking the horse race where dozens of beasts compete over a
total to $230m – includes money from Australia range of daunting obstacles. It’s an endurance test
and Japan. requiring judgment, an understanding of prevailing
conditions, strong strategy, experienced jockeyship
It may seem absurd that it has taken this long for and no small degree of luck.
eSignatures to find their level but let that pass:
DocuSign is growing quickly to become the leader ForgeRock, however, is an easy runner to recognise,
in its space and it is already becoming the widely with a strong lineage, stable and experienced
adopted way to sign off transactions. If it continues trainers. OK, stretched metaphor over...
on its current trajectory it stands to become the
modern answer to sealing wax and fingerprint, and The company has its roots in Sun Microsystems’
the transactions world’s equivalent to Adobe PDF IDM/IAM technology which is now open-sourced
in document exchange. after having been orphaned when Oracle bought
Sun. ForgeRock’s approach is to take a grown-
DocuSign also benefits from enthusiastic up enterprise-hardened approach to the tough
customers and in Keith Krach it has a founder and security and access questions being asked of large
CEO who has seen it all before, having been a companies everywhere, and to answer them with
wunderkind executive at GM and built up a long- scalability assured.
term success at spend-management company
Ariba with valuable experience in the rollercoaster The approach has garnered $52m in VC and the
vagaries of the public markets. Ariba was once company even has a secret weapon – the quote-
valued at well over $30bn, even if SAP paid a tastic former Sun CEO Scott McNealy who acts as an
relatively modest $4.3bn to acquire it in 2012. An advisor, door-opener to prospects, and toastmaster.
IPO seems a natural conclusion to the company’s
progress so far.20 Pre-IPO Tech Companies 2015 IDG Connect
Okta OneLogin
For: For:
Well funded, strong awareness, tight partnering Narrow focus, international perspective
strategy
Against: Against:
Lots of rivals, will lose out to stack approaches Might lack muscle to defend its territory
when facing some larger prospects
Interview: CEO, Todd McKinnon Interview: CEO, Thomas Pedersen
Cloud login analysis
O f all the startups associated with single sign-
on and identity management in the cloud era,
San Francisco-based Okta probably has created the
L ike misery, according to the old adage, startups
with enormous ambition tend to love company.
In the identity management and single sign-on
biggest buzz. It has the requisite funding, a young world there’s no shortage of company of course
CEO with a good CV (ex-Salesforce.com) in the case and you might think of OneLogin as Tweedledum
of Todd McKinnon, and plenty of money to foster to Okta’s Tweedledee: a company with similar goals
growth - $155m and counting. in IDM/SSO but it has rather different ways of going
about things.
However, the company might be more traditional
than it looks: it takes a classical enterprise sales Founded in 2009, OneLogin is of Danish extraction
approach and it has to cover the on-premise with Thomas Pedersen, formerly of Zendesk, as CEO
world as well as being the guardsman to cloud - even if, as with Okta, its HQ is in the Californian
applications. sun. Like many companies with non-US leadership,
OneLogin already feels international and in early
It has also taken the trouble to build go-to-market 2014 it opened datacentre space in London and
relationships and integrations that go beyond Amsterdam. Given what happened with Edward
press-release promises. Box, Salesforce, NetSuite, Snowden, NSA, RSA, PRISM and so on, that now
Workday and ServiceNow are among its confreres. seems rather prescient.
Customers include many hyper-growth tech firms Focused on execution, scalability and with perhaps
but also the likes of Chiquita, National Geographic, more of a cloud orientation than most peers,
Gatwick Airport, Rotary International and Pabst OneLogin has raised a relatively modest $18m in
Brewing Company. funds but says it is already cashflow positive. Most
importantly it has real, living, breathing customers
like recruitment group Reed.co.uk, PBS, Netflix,
Stanford University, Condé Nast, Uber and GoPro
tooting its horn.20 Pre-IPO Tech Companies 2015 IDG Connect
PernixData Pure Storage
For: For:
Simple upgrade path for storage systems A pioneer that is riding the wave of demand for
Flash enterprise storage
Against: Against:
Perception of a band-aid solution The storage giants are fighting back with
everything they have
Interview: PernixData, CTO Interview: CEO, Scott Dietzen
I f you were building a storage dream team for
the new age of heavily virtualised, automated,
dynamic, low-latency, I/O-centric storage
L ike PernixData, Pure Storage is closely aligned
with Flash media. The Silicon Valley company
already has a big reputation in building very fast
networking you might look for CVs from engineers storage networks that build on the solid-state
high up at VMware and with experience of modern technology.
enterprise server, interconnect and storage
approaches. On that front, PernixData scores with Like others in the sector, its rise has been sudden
its senior management fresh out of the 800-pound and it claims to be the fastest growing company
gorilla of virtualisation software. of all. Bold words, but there’s no doubt that the
company has built a roster of clients and a list of
Like VMware, PernixData wants it all. Its investors desperate to be in on the action.
opportunity is to be pervasive and ubiquitous,
layering over and slithering across datacentres With revenues of over $100m per year it could float
regardless of the hardware brands its software sits quickly but it is using its large VC treasure chest of
upon. Its real promise, as so often in modern server $475m to take its own sweet time and enjoy life
rooms, is to abstract storage networking elements outside the glare of the stock watchers’ arc lights.
in order to create a faster design without having This is probably a smart idea, considering how
to ask computer designers, or CIOs who buy from some earlier IPOs like Violin Memory struggled
them, to start over. Again the VMware comparison immediately post-float.
is valid: decouple under the hood to provide a
smarter upgrade path. With attitude to match its fat wad, Pure is taking
aim at the “refrigerator-sized” incumbents or, as it
The San Jose-based company is already part of doubtless sees them, relics of the old datacentre.
the new datacentre furniture, despite being less Its not-so-secret sauce lies in having developed
than three years old. It has raised a modest sum ground-up around Flash. That primes it for the
compared to others ($62m) but then its R&D is algo-trader and his ilk but also many other buyers
in place and it has no datacentres or hardware in need of raw speed – and as Flash prices fall, its
designs to factor in. ambit should become even broader.
A sign of PernixData’s popularity is that others
are already smearing it by suggesting it is a
quick-fix but customers beating a path to its door
suggest the company has built a highly desirable
mousetrap.20 Pre-IPO Tech Companies 2015 IDG Connect
SimpliVity Skyhigh Networks
For: For:
Broad hyperconverged stack Unique selling proposition that is timely
Against: Against:
Squeezed between startups and giants Need to convince buyers of robustness and stay up
to date
Interview: CEO, Doron Kempel Interview: CEO, Rajiv Gupta
M any companies attempt to throw some fairy
dust on their CEOs by telling tales of their
derring-do as sporting heroes and so on. SimpliVity
It’s an old chestnut (but true) that technology
moves so fast these days that it’s hard even for the
best CIOs to see more than a blur of activity, never
CEO Doron Kempel has a remarkable story to tell mind take into account all of the risk/reward factors
- he led a mission to assassinate Saddam Hussein - that come with new code and kit. Not wanting
but he probably wishes he didn’t have to tell it. to miss a trick or expose themselves to risk, they
therefore equip themselves with teams of helpers:
The story of Kempel’s former life gets in the way CTOs, CISOs, architects, consultants and analysts.
of the SimpliVity story in the same way that an But in an age of skunkworks, freemium services,
elephant on the table would cause issues at Shadow IT, BYOD, cloud downloads and more, even
a wedding buffet. That’s a shame because (1) that throw-bodies-at-the-problem approach might
Kempel’s IT track record in building Diligent not be enough.
Technologies, sold to IBM in 2008, is more germane
and (2) the company has some of the most Enter, from Cupertino in California, near Apple,
ambitious technology of any of those stalking the Skyhigh Networks, with its systematic counsel for
new datacentres. cloud applications, providing a risk level register
that tells IT bosses what they’ve got and what is
SimpliVity takes the integrated infrastructure, or their exposure.
converged system, concept further than perhaps
anybody, layering on capabilities from caching It’s an interesting model even if only time will tell
to WAN optimisation via de-duplication, data how valuable enterprises find Skyhigh’s advice.
virtualisation and backup. Since we spoke to CEO Rajiv Gupta in May 2014
the company has picked up an additional $40m
The result has seen plaudits from Kleiner Perkins in funding, taking its pot to over $66m. Gupta has
luminary John Doerr who called SimpliVity’s exited startups before for up to $100m and says he
Omnicube appliance “one of the biggest has higher hopes for this project – like many CEOs
innovations in enterprise computing since he wants to build a Salesforce.com-like company
VMware”. Like Victor Kiam with Remington shavers, with legs to last the long term.
Doerr liked the company so much that he put
his company’s money into it and became one of It’s an intriguing concept but keeping up to date
the investors that gave SimpliVity a total of over with the changing landscape will be a challenge
$101m in funds and the unusually long gestation and you might argue that this is a job for a pan-
period Kempel says was needed for such a industry consortium or some other third-party.
complex project. However, Skyhigh is winning word-of-mouth
attention and respect.
Earlier this year, reports suggested HP was keen
to buy SimpliVity for a price our sources say was
in the $700m range. If SimpliVity suceeds, the
company won’t want for suitors or other options.20 Pre-IPO Tech Companies 2015 IDG Connect
Sophos Splice Machine
For: For:
Excellent reputation; differentiated demographic In a hot space with a sharp position promising fast
ROI
Against: Against:
Enterprise market mostly goes to biggest security Another dense market where wheat has yet to be
firms separated from chaff
Interview: CEO, Kris Hagerman Interview: CEO, Monte Zweben
I n a business famous (notorious?) for its
salesmanship and heavy-duty marketing, Sophos
is exceptional for its soft-handed approach to the
S plice Machine’s interesting name comes from the
way it splices together information threshed by
its analytics engine. CEO Monte Zweben, worked
hot potato of infosecurity. It’s also focused on small on the Space Shuttle programme, founded and led
and medium-sized businesses while all around it Blue Martini, once a hotter than hot eCommerce
in enterprise security – and beyond – look to the high-flier, and sees scope for his latest venture to
buyers with the deepest pockets. And finally, its disrupt database incumbents. His timing is good
UK headquartered, even if its CEO resides in Silicon as the likes of Oracle, IBM and Microsoft are rocked
Valley. by the forces of NoSQL, Cassandra/open source,
Big Data and the rise of lowball-priced commodity
Sophos has a strong marque among security servers and storage.
professionals and lots of distinctiveness compared
to the old guard of Symantec, McAfee et al. Being Founded in 2012, San Francisco-based Splice
privately held has given it room to manoeuvre and Machine has picked up $22m in funding. Cracking a
go its own way – migrating security management big hole in the enormous RDBMS market is almost
capabilities largely to the cloud, for example. rocket science but taking a slice of the emerging
new database sector is a mission that could be
Sophos seems a classic case of a private accomplished.
company (it’s protected by Apex Partners) that
moves without duress but when I met CEO, Kris
Hagerman, in September 2014 he seemed keen
on an eventual IPO, albeit without any rushing or
undue hullabaloo – very Sophos.
New funding could give Sophos the chance to
raise its game a league and there is plenty of
headroom for it to explore geographic growth.20 Pre-IPO Tech Companies 2015 IDG Connect
Teradici Vormetric
For: For:
Timely and well-supported by major OEMs Security space has never been more lucrative nor
in-demand
Against: Against:
Likely to be challenged by those same OEMs Modest funding, differentiation
Interview: CEO and Founder, Interview: CEO, Alan Kessler
Dan Cordingley
T eradici is no spring chicken. A 10-year-old
Canadian company based in Burnaby, British
Columbia, it has taken a while to become fully-
T he Edward Snowden/NSA/PRISM/RSA brouhaha
has led to many outcomes, both good and bad
but for the information security sector it was binary
fledged but this could be a good time for the manna from heaven. Vormetric’s angle is a sound
thin-client, server-based computing mantra that it one even if it is really a re-tread of what used to be
espouses. a self-evident truth: it is the enemy within who is
often the biggest threat to your secrets.
Founder and CEO Dan Cordingley has a plan you
could write on a matchbox. Take everything that Vormetric’s security ethos is predicated on the
was wrong in the network computer model and fix idea that you protect what’s most important and
it. That means doing all the hard work at the server prioritise effectively. If it was safeguarding a house it
end, monitoring network performance in real time, might concede that a burglar steal the milk bottles
and identifying image types for faster prioritisation and the newspaper in the letterbox, even the TV set
and processing. in extremis, but the family jewels will remain safe
and sound. Vormetric does this by restricting access:
With a background at Level One and Intel after the Snowden had a trusted status as a contractor and
latter acquired the former, Cordingley’s CV is good therefore access – and that might well have been
for this task and its execution in both software mistake number-one.
and silicon. In recent years, Teradici has built up a
formidable array of OEMs including VMware, Dell, At 13 years old and modestly funded to the tune of
HP, IBM and Fujitsu, selling software, thin-client $20m, this Silicon Valley company is more likely to
computers and even screens. The rise of tablets be sucked into one of the M&A-voracious enterprise
and smartphones as clients won’t hurt either. security giants than to float but, either way, it is part
of the zeitgeist.
After doing the hard lifting in those early years,
Teradici also has some strong IP and it won’t be
easy for even the big companies to catch up on
the R&D front. If ‘thin is in’, Teradici has plenty of
headroom for growth. Cordingley would like an
eventual IPO but is realistic enough to know that
his company could end up prey and his level-
headed approach is admirable.20 Pre-IPO Tech Companies 2015 IDG Connect Conclusion There’s no shortage of self-proclaimed experts, pundits, observers, analysts and others willing to prognosticate on technology IPOs. It’s a sphere of activity that has generated billions of dollars for a few geniuses, a great number of risk takers and a host of their supporters. But it’s also a world that lures many, many more hangers-on who are desperate for a piece of the action, whether that’s a fiscal return or just the chance to vicariously shine. For the last couple of years the going has been good for technology IPOs as a series of technological inflexion points have created opportunities for young companies. And any survey of the landscape would have to include cloud computing, mobile computing and communications, collaboration, social networks, security, Big Data and bring-your-own-device schemes. However, at the same time, there are fears that the bubble, having expanded and expanded, will shortly pop, such are the valuations that have been placed on companies before and after their market debuts. In a way, we could just dismiss all this as froth but these valuations affect newer companies’ ability to compete with the largest players and to provide ICT buyers with alternatives to the status quo. A healthy IPO market goes hand-in-hand with the acceptable face of capitalism. One final note, although Alibaba dwarfed other technology IPOs in 2014 this list remains stubbornly US-centric. This is in part my own fault for not having the knowledge of more companies from across the world and the time to summon and summarise more deserving Asian, African, Middle Eastern, Latin American and Australian countries. However, it was notable that even Alibaba itself ultimately elected to float on the US market. As globalisation continues it is to be hoped that the technology IPO market also becomes a truly worldwide phenomenon. That would be yet another twist in the remarkable saga of technology companies and their journeys toward making the world a smarter place. About IDG Connect IDG Connect is the demand generation division of International Data Group (IDG), the world’s largest technology media company. Established in 2005, it utilises access to 38 million business decision makers’ details to unite technology marketers with relevant targets from any country in the world. Committed to engaging a disparate global IT audience with truly localised messaging, IDG Connect also publishes market specific thought leadership papers on behalf of its clients, and produces research for B2B marketers worldwide. www.idgconnect.com
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