Editor’s note: This is the latest in a series of articles profiling companies that will be presenting at the CED’s annual venture conference April 26-27 in Pinehurst.
_______________________________________________________________________________________In a competitive universe filled with giant players such as IBM and EMC, Arsenal Digital Solutions ranks as a global player with fewer than 100 employees and a history dating back a mere eight years.
The Cary-based firm now operates with partners across five continents, has some 900 customers, and has recorded double-digit growth for 16 consecutive quarters in one of IT’s most competitive and lucrative businesses.
Blending patent-pending technology with a business plan designed to include partners rather than build everything itself, privately held Arsenal Digital is capitalizing on the tremendous surge in demand for data security, storage and replication services.
“Arsenal has continuously led the industry in service innovation by simplifying and automating tasks traditionally needed to manage multi-vendor enterprise storage and data protection environments,” company executives told LTW. “By outsourcing this essential business requirement, customers reduce costs, optimize performance and increase visibility over their storage and backup solutions, enabling them to refocus scarce IT resources.”
Driven by such events as the new millennium, the terrorist attacks of 9-11-01 and legislation such as Sarbanes-Oxley and digital medical records protection, the demand for storage area and network area services is expected to top $40 billion this year, according to Arsenal Digital execs who responded to Local Tech Wire’s Q&A.
Even in a better investment climate, VCs are more demanding than ever in terms of due diligence. Why should investors be interested in your firm?
Interest in Arsenal stems from the strong market demand for Arsenal’s storage management services, the company’s scalable business model and the management team’s proven ability to execute.
What’s your “elevator pitch” in a paragraph or a few sentences?
Arsenal Digital Solutions is the world’s most trusted provider of Storage Management Services. Arsenal delivers a comprehensive portfolio of fully managed, on-demand solutions that support the complex storage, data protection, business continuity, disaster recovery, and compliance needs of over 900 customers spanning five continents. Arsenal has continuously led the industry in service innovation by simplifying and automating tasks traditionally needed to manage multi-vendor enterprise storage and data protection environments. By outsourcing this essential business requirement, customers reduce costs, optimize performance and increase visibility over their storage and backup solutions, enabling them to refocus scarce IT resources.
What is the “pain point” (or points) you address for your customers?
Arsenal’s broad array of service offerings include the latest storage area network (SAN), network areas storage (NAS), replication, mirroring, disk and tape-based protection services, enabling businesses to meet exact Recovery Time Objectives and Recovery Point Objectives. From data centers to branch offices to remote laptops, Arsenal’s services can dramatically improve the quality of customers’ data protection and security, significantly reduce storage management costs and meet or exceed business continuity, disaster recovery and many of the requirements imposed by increasingly rigorous regulatory compliance mandates such as HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley, SAS 70 and SEC 17-a.
What makes your company unique? Do you have a proprietary and/or a patented technology? Please explain why it is unique and what the status is of any patent filings.
Arsenal has continuously led the industry in service innovation by simplifying and automating tasks traditionally needed to manage multi-vendor enterprise storage and data protection environments. By outsourcing this essential business requirement, customers reduce costs, optimize performance, and increase visibility over their storage and backup solutions, enabling them to refocus scarce IT resources.
Arsenal centrally manages one of the largest multi-vendor networked storage environments in the world. With over 10 Petabytes of storage management experience, Arsenal is uniquely qualified to protect data and make it accessible when and where customers need it. This is why over 900 businesses worldwide, including many Fortune 500 companies, trust their data to Arsenal. More importantly, with a 100 percent recoverability record, proven SAS 70 storage processes and methodologies, Arsenal shares customers’ expectations for service quality and backs its services with Service Level Agreement guarantees.
Arsenal has received many accolades from leading industry and analyst firms. These include a listing as the only private, venture-backed company in the Gartner Storage Services Magic Quadrant, and three times named by Deloitte and Touché as one of the fastest growing companies in North Carolina.
Arsenal has several patents pending.
What makes your product(s) and/or services unique vs. your competition? (Who is your competition, and what do they offer?)
Arsenal has several distinct competitive advantages. They include:
Advantage 1:
Arsenal’s s3 Architecture is the key enabling platform behind Arsenal’s services, which manage over 10 Petabytes of information in 30 data centers in 20 cities. This patent-pending Services-Oriented Architecture combines proven technology and formalized processes and procedures with unique intellectual property to deliver high quality, repeatable service offerings, scalability, and lower overall management cost than any other service provider in the industry.
Advantage 2:
Arsenal offers the industry’s most comprehensive array of service offerings, including the latest SAN, NAS, replication, mirroring, disk and tape-based protection services, enabling businesses to meet exact Recovery Time Objectives and Recovery Point Objectives. Using its advanced services architecture, Arsenal integrates the hardware, software toolsets, best practice methodologies, processes and procedures to deliver consistent service quality and customer satisfaction with a single point of accountability. Arsenal’s solutions enable businesses to meet or exceed business continuity, disaster recovery and many of the requirements imposed by increasingly rigorous regulatory compliance mandates such as HIPAA and Sarbanes-Oxley.
Advantage 3:
Arsenal centrally manages one of the largest multi-vendor networked storage environments in the world. With over 10 Petabytes of storage management experience, Arsenal is uniquely qualified to protect customers’ data and make it accessible when and where they need it — helping them keep a competitive edge. This is why over 900 businesses worldwide, including many Fortune 500 companies, trust their data to Arsenal. More importantly, with a 100% recoverability record, proven SAS 70 storage processes and methodologies, Arsenal shares customers’ expectations for service quality and backs its services with Service Level Agreement guarantees.
Does your company already generate revenue? If so, how much? Are you cash flow positive?
Arsenal has produced 16 consecutive quarters of double-digit revenue growth. As a privately held company, Arsenal doesn’t disclose additional details about its revenues.
What is your target market? What is the size of that market in terms of dollars? What share of that market do you believe you can win?
Arsenal and its partners currently serve more than 900 customers worldwide. Customers, which range from members of the Fortune 50 to small to medium-sized businesses, represent a wide range of industries including Financial Services, Healthcare, Legal, Government, Education, Utilities, Telecom, Technology and more.
According to Gartner/Dataquest, the worldwide storage management services market is projected to grow from $26 billion in 2002 to $42 billion in 2005.
Why will investors be impressed with your management team?
Part of the reason Arsenal is the industry’s most trusted storage management service company is because it has the industry’s most trusted team to stand behind it. Arsenal’s leadership team includes industry veterans and professionals who understand what it takes to operate a world-class storage management infrastructure and deliver world-class service.
What is the exit strategy for the investor from your company? Are there potential strategic alliances with larger companies? Do you wish to take the company public? Or do you wish to grow the company and either sell it or acquire other companies?
Arsenal is devoted to providing the best storage management services that grow revenues and enable the company to maximize shareholder value.
