Data Domain announces IPO

Data Domain Monday announced that it has filed to go public.

The company, who makes appliances that de-duplicate redundant data during the backup process, is filing for a US$100 million IPO. After the IPO occurs, Data Domain has asked to be listed by the Securities and Exchange Commission as DDUP.

Data Domain is the first company in the de-duplication business to seek an IPO. It is the fifth storage company to do so in the past year. Last year, two other vendors in the backup and recovery business -- CommVault and Double-Take filed for IPOs. Riverbed, a vendor of wide-area file services and acceleration appliances also filed for an IPO. So did Isilon, a company that makes a clustered storage system.

Goldman, Sachs & Co. and Morgan Stanley will act as joint managers of the IPO and Thomas Weisel Partners and Pacific Crest Securities will act as co-managers for the offering.

Data Domain claims over 650 customers for its appliance, which it started shipping in February 2004.

A study from The Taneja Group estimates that revenue from de-duplication technologies will grow from US$262 million in 2007 to over US$1.6 billion in 2010.

Data Domain competes with a variety of vendors, including Diligent and Sepaton. Last year, EMC acquired Avamar, a vendor of de-duplication software for US$165 million. Network Appliance is planning to support de-duplication in its virtual tape libraries. Quantum gained de-duplication capability with its acquisition of ADIC for US$770 million. And Symantec got into the technology with the acquisition of DataCenter Technologies.

The company, which was founded in 2001, is funded by Greylock Partners, New Enterprise Associates and Sutter Hill Ventures.