Online Backups Business Treating EVault Well

Published: November 13, 2006

by Alex Woodie

Things seem to be going well for EVault, the provider of online backup and recovery solutions for the iSeries and other platforms. According to the company, which is privately held and therefore not required to disclose financial data, fiscal year 2006 saw revenues increased by 44 percent while the number of customers increased by more than a third. What's more, EVault says the momentum continued into the first part of fiscal year 2007.

EVault, which was founded in 1997, was one of the first companies to commercialize online back ups and recoveries. In 2004, the company introduced support for OS/400 backups, giving iSeries shops the choice of having their backup and archive data hosted by EVault in one of its eight data centers and gaining access to it over the Internet, or keeping the data in-house by running the EVault Infostage backup software in more of a classic disk-to-disk backup scenario. In both cases, tape drive-based backup processes typically go away (or are relegated to archives).

Judging from EVault's success, online backups seem to be catching on. A spokeswoman with EVault shed a little more light on the company's results for fiscal year 2006, which ended June 30. According to the spokeswoman, fiscal year 2006 revenue increased by about $10 million compared to the previous year, from the mid-$20 million range to the mid-$30 million range. Net income for fiscal year 2006 was in the millions of dollars, which represented an increase of 503 percent compared to the previous year, the company says.

EVault's good business continued into its first quarter of fiscal year 2007, which ended September 30. According to the spokeswoman, the company posted a new record revenue figure, which she would only say was more than $10 million. The company continues to be profitable, and has posted 10 straight quarters of profit growth, the spokeswoman says.

All of this revenue and profit growth is attributable to an increase in the number of customer. According to EVault, the company grew its customer base by 37 percent last year, and now has 8,500 customers. What's more, the amount of customer data under protection by EVault increased by more than 244 percent compared to fiscal year 2005.

This success has garnered EVault some attention from the list makers, and EVault is on several of them, including Deloitte's 2006 Technology Fast 500, Deloitte's Silicon Valley Technology Fast 50, Inc. Magazine's Inc. 500, and the 2006 East Bay Business Times Fast 50.

Phil Gilmour, president and CEO of the Emeryville, California, company, attributes EVault's success to the desire to understand its customers' data protection requirements. "Our tremendous customer uptake and business growth during the record quarter and past fiscal year is a strong testament to our commitment to deliver what customers want and need," he says.