In Soho’s red and tranquil labyrinth on a fine late-April day, the sun is shining, drinkers congregate in smartly dressed clusters on pub corners and I’m meeting a company growing like billy-o that’s the latest upsetting the applecart in information technology. London, it’s good to have you back…
The company is Vast Data and it’s the latest in a fine tech tradition of companies that build a better mousetrap and watch the world beat a path to their doors. In the achingly fashionable and (even more achingly expensive) Soho Hotel, co-founder and CMO Jeff Denworth is telling me about his disruptive venture. The numbers are eye-popping even by the standards of this crazy business. Vast has a $300m annual revenue run-rate, is quadrupling in size year on year and today has about 400 staff. About 40% of its business comes from outside the US, a proportion many fine companies never reach.
This all comes on the back of disaggregated datacentre storage technology that is changing the economics of the sector. Vast made a bet-the-farm choice to go all out for Flash media and it is paying off: Denworth says, “We did make that bet and every day it looks smarter.”