3PAR celebrates a perfect ten

3PAR began operations in May 1999

Utility storage vendor 3PAR is celebrating its 10th anniversary this month.

3PAR began operations in May 1999, commercially launching its virtualised 3PAR Utility Storage platform and proprietary 3PAR Thin Provisioning software in 2002.

Founded by engineers from Sun Microsystems to address utility computing, 3PAR was privately held until its initial public offering in November 2007.

David Scott, president and chief executive of 3PAR, said: “We have not only spent the past decade establishing ourselves as a storage virtualisation pioneer, we have also continued to deliver on our promise of making storage systems simple and efficient.

“We believe this is the reason we have been able to quickly penetrate the market for today’s most demanding cloud computing deployments. As a pioneer in storage technologies, we intend to continue innovating to extend our technology leadership position in the industry.”

3PAR has four subsidiaries in the US, Europe and Asia, with headquarters in Fremont, California, as well as a research and development facility in Belfast.

The vendor achieved $184.7m (£116m) in revenue in the fiscal year ending 31 March.

Shares of the company’s common stock were initially traded on the NYSE Arca, a trading platform of the New York Stock Exchange, before the company transferred the listing of its shares to the NYSE’s main platform, commonly known as the "Big Board," in December 2008.

Arun Taneja, founder and consulting analyst of market watcher Taneja Group, said: “With the administrative simplicity of its utility storage platform and pioneering introduction of thin provisioning within open-systems storage arrays, 3PAR brought to market a business model that has changed the cost structure of storage by giving its customers the flexibility to grow as they go.”

Taneja added that 3PAR’s technology paved the way for new hardware- and software-as-a-service offerings, Web 2.0 innovation, and cloud computing deployments that have enabled enterprise and service provider customers to lower Capex and Opex.