Technology

Catching The Next New Tech Wave

Posted by David A. Chapa on

Have you ever surfed or watched surfers from the pier or the beach?  Have you ever wondered how some of them seem to always catch the right wave?  It is a combination of experience, a little intuition, and being properly positioned.  Let me continue with my surfing analogy a little bit more before I jump into the bulk of this blog post.

According to the San Diego Surf School’s blog, “How to Pick The Right Surfing Wave”, the writer points out, “As a surfer moves from white water waves to catching unbroken waves, the goal is to achieve the longest ride.”  Achieve the longest ride, I like that statement, especially as it relates to business, entrepreneurship, and startups.  The writer goes on to describe several types of waves

  • Flat Swells
  • Pitching Waves
  • Closeouts
  • The Split Peak
  • Half-Built Swells

It is the last one I want to talk about as it relates to the next “tech wave” to come.  You see they describe the half-built swells as “the waves a surfer should be looking for. Seen building against the horizon, half-built swells allow for a swift entry into the wave…”

Selecting the right wave not only increases your chances of catching a wave; it also saves on arm strength, solidifies your position, and decreases frustration. In the words of Duke Kahanamoku, the father of modern surfing,

“Just take your time – wave comes. Let the other guys go, catch another one.”

As I read this it almost takes me right back to California, where I lived in the mid-80s, on Manhattan Beach watching the surfers in sheer amazement.  And that is the imagery one gets when looking at a company that jumped up on top of that tech wave and began riding it as long as it could be ridden.  I think of companies like Data Domain, YouTube, Waze, LeftHand Networks, Solidfire, and the list goes on.  What did all of these companies and many others like them have in common?  I believe the founders and visionaries of these startups all saw the half-built swells building against the horizon and in the spirit of Duke “The Big Kahuna”, waited patiently until it was time to paddle like hell and execute.

That’s what I see in one tech company today, Clumio, a company you may not have heard of yet, but you soon will.  They see the half-built swell and they know that big beautiful wave is about to come in, but in the meantime, “let the other guys go”, while Clumio is focused on the target, the prize.

So, who is Clumio?

Taken right from one of their press releases, “Clumio was founded in 2017 by serial entrepreneur Poojan Kumar, co-founder and former CEO of PernixData (acquired by Nutanix [Nasdaq:NTNX]), alongside Woon Ho Jung and Kaustubh Patil who bring strong engineering and leadership backgrounds from VMware and Nutanix.”  There are some notable industry veterans who invested in Clumio as well such as Mark Leslie, founder of Veritas Technologies, and John Thompson, chairman of the board at Microsoft.  Not to mention heavy hitter, Mike Speiser with Sutter Hill Ventures sitting on the board.

Clumio is a secure, backup-as-a-service solution consolidating the enterprise data center and remote sites with no hardware or software to size, configure, manage, or buy.  As cloud adoption has increased exponentially over the last five to six months, enterprises can opt to use Clumio to protect VMware Cloud on AWS as well as native AWS services.  The upside Clumio brings to the table is it is able to protect data irrespective of data location, and as organizations are navigating their own unique digital transformation and journey to the cloud, that matters.  These are the benefits Clumio bring to the enterprise, as outlined on their website:

  • Easy to Manage – setup and start protecting your data in less than 15 minutes
  • Predictable Costs – pay for the service based on the number of VMs protected
  • Scale On-Demand – resources automatically adapt to meet requirements
  • Global Compliance – create one policy to apply to VMs on-premise and in the cloud
  • Always-On Security – all backups are encrypted in-transit, and at rest

Clumio defines themselves as, “Authentic SaaS”.  I think that is rather SaaSy, and I like it.  From the looks of things, they have everything, or just about everything, an enterprise data protection play should.

  • Policy Management and Scheduler
  • Key Management
  • User Management
  • Dedupe
  • Catalog

What customers say they like is the real-time dashboard, the auto-scaling where it takes advantage of the elasticity of the public cloud, and workload based policies, in other words, intelligent policy management.  Today, they support AWS native services, VMware, and Office 365, with much more coming on the “horizon”, I’m sure.  If it will be in the cloud, Clumio will certainly be one to keep your eyes on.

From my perspective, they have their eye on the horizon watching the momentum build, and are positioned to ride this wave for a very long time.

David Chapa, Chief Analyst, Founder, The CTE Group

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