Still, there's no slowdown overseas: Hedger says compliance laws helped U.K.-based KVS more than double its installed base in 2003.
Compliance has also broadened the market for competition, and in the U.S. it's sparked a series of acquisitions over the last year. EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC) bought Legato; Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ)
acquired Persist Technologies; Connected Corp.
acquired Archive-IT; Zantaz Inc.
bought Educom; and Open Text
purchased IXOS Software AG (Nasdaq: XOSY). (See EMC Gobbles Legato, HP Buys Archive Guys, Connected Gets Into Archive, Zantaz Makes Compliance Buy, and IXOS Reports Earnings Up.)
All of these moves were aimed at strengthened archiving products, and they provide a greater challenge for KVS. But Hedger waxes brash. A lot of companies have merged in the past 12 months, probably because they werent successful on their own, he says. Our plan is to continue to expand our business, but we will not be burning cash.
Indeed, it doesnt sound as if KVS will go back for more funding, but Hedger says the company's not in as big a hurry to go public as people think.
Companies go public for a couple of reasons, he says. Either they want more money to expand, or the shareholders would like to take some money out of the company. We will consider a float at some point, but clearly theres no plan to do that in the short term. Its better for us to be financially secure, and we are.
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