PE Hub reports today that San Diego-based Verari Systems shut down on Friday, but a top executive at the company, which provides blade servers and data storage technology, says the doors are still open and that Verari is restructuring its business. Verari is backed by venture investors including Seattle-based Voyager Capital.
“Verari has initiated a process that will protect our customers’ investment and benefit our creditors as we restructure the business,” Dan Gatti, Verari’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing operations, writes in an e-mail this morning. “The intention is to safeguard customers’ investment and provide an ongoing support capability.”
Gatti wouldn’t say much beyond that when I called him, although he says Verari has not filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization (or Chapter 7 liquidation). He declined to comment when I asked about layoffs at the company, and I could not find any recent WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notificatin) filings by Verari with California’s Employment Development Department.
In 2004, the private, venture-backed company told the San Diego Union-Tribune it had close to $100 million in sales and about 265 employees.
Verari told me earlier this year that it has an impressive list of customers (about 95 percent are outside the San Diego area), including Akamai, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Petrobras, Harris, and Lockheed Martin. The company also had shifted its strategy at the beginning of the year to focus on its “green” Forest product, which packages its server and storage equipment in cargo containers to maximize both the computing density and energy efficiency of data centers.
Verari co-founder and chief technology officer David Drigger told me the company has raised three rounds of venture funding, but he declined to say how much Verari has received. PE Hub says the company has raised more than $80 million, with Celerity Partners, Carlyle Venture Partners, Sierra Ventures, and Voyager Capital among the investors.
