News

posted on 19 March 2008 08:24

What's happened to Mendocino Software? The assets are being sold off in a kind of start-up yard sale. This auction brief says it all:-

"Mendocino Software Office / Technology
- High end Servers, Workstations, Computers, Laptops, Flat Panel Monitors,
- Networking Equipment, Cisco, Phone System, Phones, Desks, Chairs,
- Cubicles, Copiers, Printers, and much more.
- Special Interest: 2005 Porsche Cayenne Turbo. Silver/Black - Miles: 53,500 Vin# WP1AC29P45LA91205"

A Porsche Cayenne; who drove that? Ah, fine times when your company is on the up and up. But along comes the dreary reckoning when it's on the way down and bottoming out.

The bleak list in the catalogue includes dozens of Dell and HP servers, PCs, screens, notebooks, HP MSA 1000, HBAs, Brocade fabric switches and so forth plus oddities such as a pool table and a ping-pong table.

Mendocino Software was a continuous data protection supplier with its InfiniView technology, and it crashed when that stand-alone CDP market fell away. The company's website still exists, complete with its last press announcement, the recruitment of Sun veteran Kathleen Holmgren to be the new CEO in November, 2007.

At the time she said: “Working with Steve Colman and assuming the CEO position at Mendocino, a well-respected and innovative company, is the perfect opportunity. I am passionate about Mendocino, the InfiniView technology and the talented team having had the opportunity to see it grow in the past few years.”

She joined at what might have been the top but was really a way station on a savagely steepening decline. Hindsight is a cruel, cruel way to look at past decisions. The sad detritus listed in the catalogue will be matched by the sadness in Mendocino's employees lives. It all started with high hopes and then came crashing to earth, a start-up that bombed.

The company developed and sold continuous data protection software but there was no continuous protection for it. That's not the way in start-ups where you swim or you sink - and Mendocino sank.

Let's hope that the people involved can pick themselves up, dust themselves down and move on. It's better by far to try to fly like an eagle than trudge around in the mud.

Sympathies to everyone concerned and best wishes for the future.

^{[Chris Mellor.]}