The History of Unitrends
Last night I spotted this post on the IT Social Community of Spiceworks, asking about the history of Unitrends and who some of our customers were, since the CIO of a company that is considering using Unitrends had never heard of us. Reading this post made me realize that we’ve all been so heads down working on our day to day activities, that we haven’t had a chance to answer this simple question publicly.
As I begin my fourth year as Unitrends’ CEO, I want to tell you my Unitrends story, which ties in well to the Unitrends story. My career has spanned twenty plus years, including senior management postions at SunMicro, Veritas, and Acronis, and I got to learn about Unitrends from an interesting perspective when I joined the Board of Directors in 2009. Founded in 1989, Unitrends has been in the backup business for quite a while. Originally a software company, Unitrends moved to the physical appliance model a number of years ago based upon customer feedback, with a goal to improve the customer experience. During the year I sat on the board, I saw the tremendous opportunity that was within reach, if Unitrends had the right direction, and in 2010, I jumped at the chance to become the CEO of Unitrends. My decision was a no brainer. I knew I could drive this company to unprecedented success with the great products already being offered and the core team that was already in place (many of whom are still with us today).
It would be easy for me to take all the credit for our success, but in reality, it was the changes in strategy that began in 2010 that have led us to where we are today. We started off by simplifying our appliances focusing on transparency in pricing. Our most important shift was a renewed focus on our end users, and their experience with us beginning with the buying process and all the way to our world class support organization. Until I became CEO, Unitrends was selling through a direct field sales team. Throw in a price book that was 100s of pages, and buying from us was hard. I like to say “We provide solutions to customers in the manner they want to purchase.”.
With the addition of a strong new management team in 2010, including our Chief Strategy Officer, Mark Campbell, some fresh capital from investors, and a focus on reducing the friction in the way our customers and partners interact with us, we launched the new Unitrends, and have never looked back. Our channel relationships are stronger than ever, and we now have over 5,000 customers worldwide. In the last two years, we’ve opened our Boston office, home to our sales and marketing teams, and opened our first offices outside of the US, in London, UK. Unitrends has an intense focus on the mid-market, and providing unprecedented customer support. We now have 250+ employees, and over 5,000 sales reps in the Channel participating in our UniRewards program and waving the Unitrends flag. We also became a profitable and award winning solutions company. We’ve spent quite a bit of time getting to know the IT Pros that use Spiceworks, aka Spiceheads, and that brings me back to why I’m writing this post.
John Evans, and all of the other folks who’ve asked about the history of Unitrends, I send my thanks. Thank you for trusting this growing company with your data protection. We know how important this is to you, and don’t take your trust lightly. If you have any other questions about Unitrends, feel free to drop me an email, [email protected]. I look forward to hearing from you.
Oh, and John – have your CIO give me a ring anytime to talk about Unitrends!
