Looking back on 2014, it was a big year for SolidFire. Described as “the #1 Solid-State Array”, the company recently announced major growth on several fronts. Not only did it see a 50 percent rise in sequential quarterly bookings, but also saw a huge hike in its enterprise booking numbers. But it wasn't just about big hikes in overall numbers; the breakdown of these numbers also presented new information that may well change how people look at SolidFire.
The company also announced that its enterprise bookings were up fully 570 percent as compared to the 2013 numbers. The fourth quarter alone saw an increase of 50 percent for enterprise customers, and the service provider segment likewise saw rapid growth in the field. The raw numbers were impressive enough, but SolidFire didn't stop there; the Cloud Builder reseller channel now measures over 100 partners strong, bringing channel contribution to better than 60 percent of total bookings, according to reports. Several major enterprises from Gearbox Software to Wagner Equipment Co. have come onboard in recent days, and better than 90 percent of SolidFire's enterprise bookings have a Cloud Builder channel partner involved in some fashion.
These numbers contribute to some impressive results. Reports suggest that around 58,000 businesses around the world put SolidFire storage to use in some way, and several new service providers became customers just in the last quarter. SolidFire also doubled its employee base, shipped product to over 20 separate countries, brought out the third generation of its SF Series flagship line, and also landed a Visionary title in Gartner (News - Alert)'s Magic Quadrant study in the solid-state array category.
Dave Wright, who serves as SolidFire's founder and CEO, offered up some comment on SolidFire's numbers in the last year, saying “SolidFire exceeded all expectations in 2014. We have seen demand for large-scale flash infrastructure accelerate pace not only here within North America, but across EMEA and APJ as well. SolidFire's storage platform doesn't stop at helping customers meet immediate performance challenges. We enable storage to be the most transformative element within customers' datacenter infrastructure, helping them drive greater automation and scale across their businesses. As we look forward in 2015, SolidFire plans to continue expanding our market reach with unique storage solutions aligned to the many different ways that customers are consuming storage infrastructure now and in the future.”
2014 was a big year indeed for SolidFire, and the numbers make it absolutely clear. There are certainly cases enough to show why the solid-state array might be making gains; the sheer growth of the data center concept, a routine user of the solid-state array, suggests reason enough for gains in the solid state sector. It certainly doesn't hurt that SolidFire has a substantial network working in its favor, and its particularly advanced Quality of Service (QoS) control systems certainly contribute as well. Take a solid entrant and put it into a market that's in a rapid state of growth and it's the perfect recipe for a company to do well overall.
It will be interesting to see if SolidFire's 2015 turns out as well as its 2014, but only 2016 will show if that's the case. Still, SolidFire likely doesn't have an interest in losing ground in this market, so it will likely be working to improve as time goes on.
Edited by Rory J. Thompson