Riverbed Files for IPO

Once upon a time, companies needed to have a few quarters of profitability under their belt before going public.

Those times still haven’t returned.

Riverbed, a promising startup in the red-hot wide area file services (WAFS) and WAN optimization space, filed plans for an initial public offering late Thursday.

Riverbed, which calls its market “wide area data services,” boasts stunning growth, with more than 700 customers since shipping its first Steelhead appliances two years ago and 1,000 percent sales growth last year to $23 million — but the company had an operating loss of $17 million on those revenues. Riverbed had $10 million in cash at the end of 2005.

The company expects to raise about $75 million in the IPO and will trade on the Nasdaq under the symbol “RVBD.”

Riverbed says its Steelhead appliances improve applications performance and data access across WANs, increasing transmission speeds by five to 50 times and in some cases up to 100 times.

Riverbed’s IPO could be a sign that the market is thawing for storage IPOs, coming on the heels of CommVault’s much-anticipated IPO filing.

Emulex Scoops Up Aarohi

In other news, Emulex announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Aarohi for $39 million.

Emulex said it will leverage Aarohi’s intelligent processor engines for storage virtualization solutions, such as Intelligent Switching Platforms and SAN Appliances, which combined with Emulex’s recently announced LightPulse Virtual HBA technology, will give Emulex end-to-end SAN virtualization technology.

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