Brick, who joined the company in April 2002, expects Arsenal to double its annual revenue this year, following a similar growth trajectory it saw last year. (The privately held company does not disclose revenues.) He plans to increase headcount from the current 70 employees to around 90 at the end of 2003 (see Arsenal Brings in Brick).
Arsenal, founded in August 1998, appears to be back on track after expanding too rapidly in mid-2000 and being forced to lay off nearly two thirds of its workforce two years ago (see Arsenal Loads $23M).
The company provides storage management services to 700 companies that have storage hosted in one of 22 data centers. It doesn't have any direct customers; rather, it sells through partners that include AT&T Corp. (NYSE: T), NTT/Verio Inc., Metromedia Fiber Network Inc.(MFN) (Nasdaq: MFNX), and Accenture. For this reason, Brick wouldn't tell us the names of any of Arsenal's clients. "Since we're in fact wholesaling through our partners, they'd prefer us not to name them," he says. But he's happy to list off descriptions of customers, which he claims include a large global telecom, one of the largest accounting firms in the U.S., a large auto manufacturer, and a large hotel chain.
We'll have to take his word that Arsenal has a healthy stockpile of customer accounts. But bear in mind that its investors just injected another $10.5 million into the company, and Arsenal presumably gave them a bit more evidence of customer traction than it gave us.
Arsenal's funding comes amid a rash of investment in data backup service providers -- a segment that has turned out to be the only part of the storage service provider (SSP) market that has actually panned out. Companies in this area that have recently landed funding include ManagedStorage International Inc. (MSI), LiveVault Corp., and EVault Inc. (see MSI Springs on $22M, Startups Tap VC Reserves, LiveVault Locks in $10M Series B, and EVault Raises $6M Series C).
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