It’s been a while since Orange County had a startup home run. Irvine-based Avamar Technologies Inc. wouldn’t mind breaking the trend.
“I wouldn’t be opposed to it,” joked Kevin Daly, Avamar’s chief executive.
The 5-year-old software company sports $51 million in funding from big names such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and CMGI Inc. That has some watching Avamar as a possible candidate for a stock offering or an acquisition by some of the big names in data storage.
For now, Daly said Avamar isn’t in talks with anyone about being bought.
Avamar’s software eliminates redundant data, saving disk space on storage networks used by banks, corporations, Internet companies and others.
When a data entry is created, an archiving system often saves a version of it. But sometimes, data are lost or don’t make it to a central storage point. Avamar’s software makes sure there aren’t two exact copies of data on a storage network.
“You have no idea how many redundancies there are,” Daly said.
That could pique interest in Avamar among sellers of data storage computers,EMC Corp., IBM Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co.,many of which have been buying smaller companies.
“We’ve reached a point where even existing players in the market need to take notice,” Daly said.
Even so, Avamar has the means to stand on its own for now, he said. Rivals include big players such as Veritas Software Corp. and IBM’s Tivoli, as well as smaller ones such as Australia’s Rocksoft Ltd. and Palo Alto’s Data Domain Inc.
Daly came to Avamar in 2002. He used to head Quantum Storage Solutions Group, part of Milpitas-based Quantum Corp. He came to Quantum by way of its buy of ATL Products Inc., which spun off from what’s now Anaheim-based Iteris Inc. in a 1997 blockbuster stock offering.
The white-haired executive has been a big factor in Avamar’s fund-raising.
“Daly has connections,” said one local venture capitalist.
Last year, Avamar landed its first big client,an unnamed financial services firm. Also last year, the company closed its last round of funding, $15 million worth.
Does Avamar plan to seek more funding?
“I’m not a masochist,” joked Daly, who said Avamar had to close the last round to help land its first customer.
“We needed to give them the comfort of a strong balance sheet,” he said.
Avamar isn’t yet profitable, but Daly said, “We are going to try like hell to bring the company to break even.”
The latest round of funding is being used for expansion. Word is Avamar is looking for a line of credit as well.
Mostly, Avamar wants to look stable for potential clients. Right now, the company is trying to get in with makers of data storage computers so they can offer Avamar software with their products.
Avamar has such deals with IBM and Hewlett-Packard and is talking with EMC, Daly said.
“We’ll see that expand to a broader set of relationships,” he said.
For now, Avamar sells most of its software the old fashioned way,downloads from the Internet. Companies buy software from Avamar and then access it from a special site. They then install it on their networks.
With 60 people in Irvine, Avamar isn’t doing a huge amount of installation work. The company does some support work for its software.
The Patent Office recently granted a patent to Avamar that allows the company to move ahead on its key Axion line of products. Avamar bills the patent as an “advancement for disk-based data protection.”
