Comment Holding up Compellent as an example - and with an emphatic sideswipe at some business ethics - Compellent CEO Phil Soran opened his company's CDrive conference today by saying: "Big business isn't going to pull us out of this recession. Nor big computer computers. It's the small and medium-sized businesses that are going to have to pull us out."

Soran lamented a decline in business ethics, mentioning - amongst other things - a survey finding that 45 per cent of law students had cheated in their studies. He encouraged people to be ethical, focussed on efficiency, enthusiastic and entrepreneurial, and declare: "Screw the recession up."

Some 45 per cent of the quarter's revenues came from existing customers. Average customer spend peaked at $22,652 in Q308 and has fallen sequentially since to $20,422. The gross margin is 52.8 per cent, up from Q108's 52.2 per cent.

Operating expenses rose from Q108's $12.05m to $14.03m. But within that, both R &D and sales and marketing spend rose while general and administrative expense fell to $1.4m from the year-ago quarter's $1.7m. The company is being run very tight reins. Soran said Compellent hit the $100m/year run rate in Q408. With these results demonstrating an ability to almost scythe through recessionary constraints, are we looking at the next billion dollar a year storage company here?

Asked if people at Compellent were getting the scent of the possibility of it becoming a billion dollar company, Bob Fine, Compellent's director of product marketing, said: "Absolutely." Soran has also been musing about the need to keep the spirit of the founders alive. He knows that few founders are still at their companies when it becomes a billion dollar a year earner.

Next page: Road map 2009

Page:

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• Next →

Related stories

• Savvis picks Compellent for public cloud service (13 October 2009)
• 3PAR rolls out adaptive provisioning (9 October 2009)
• Avere bets filers are crying out for more tiers (5 October 2009)
• EMC puts future on FAST forward (22 September 2009)
• Compellent sparkling less brightly (30 July 2009)
• Storage co. ups profit forecast (17 June 2009)
• Comment STEC answers the billion dollar question (10 June 2009)
• NetApp buys Data Domain for $1.5bn (20 May 2009)
• STEC wins Fujitsu for its SSDs (18 May 2009)
• Windows Storage Server boosted, killed and resurrected (7 May 2009)
• Symantec hit by massive goodwill impairment (7 May 2009)
• Update Broadcom aims big guns at Emulex (5 May 2009)
• Flash: Fibre Channel drives poised for the exit (20 April 2009)
• 3PAR F-class jumps into Clariion competition (6 April 2009)
• Compellent promises fast hot data and cooler temps (23 March 2009)
• Comment: Data centre fuzzification: Clear thinkers needed (8 March 2009)
• Small is beautiful for Xyratex arrays (2 March 2009)
• Comment Niche storage suppliers hold the line in recession (27 January 2009)
• Compellent delivers storming quarter (23 October 2008)
• SNW Compellent adopts solid state (13 October 2008)
• Xyratex speeds up arrays and doubles protection (7 October 2008)
• EMC in fourth-gen CLARiiON call (5 August 2008)
• Compellent IPO a driving force? (12 October 2007)
• Storage firm Compellent registers IPO (2 July 2007)