Cloudian on way to IPO?
Well, Mike Tso CEO of Cloudian hinted that it could happen in 24 months. Jerome Lecat CEO at Scality has made similar comments in the past about Scality going public. The obstacle to their public IPOs would be annual revenue. There is the notion that $100M to $200M in annual revenue is where you want to be when you consider going for an IPO. Neither company is close to $100M in annual revenue. Scality has approx. $30M in annual revenue compared to Cloudian's approx. $25M in annual revenue. So, the question is can either of them get to $100M in annual revenue in 24 months? If the investors are "long-term greedy," they might wait to IPO. If not, then one or both of them will be sold but who would buy them? HPE has some familiarity with Scality but hasn't shown any interest yet. Digital Capital partners have ties to Cisco, so that's a possibility for Cloudian. Lenovo could buy Cloudian if they want to have an enterprise solution for capacity data storage. The number of potential buyers is not that large. IBM, Western Digital, and Red Hat have already made their acquisitions in this market.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
