The storage technology market is definitely heating up.  Bankers are pushing IPOs and startups are capitalizing on valuations that are reminiscent of the dot.com era.

CommVault (CVLT) who priced their IPO at $14.50 a share raised 161 million and closed the trading day Friday at $19.65 a share.
Riverbed’s (RVBD) IPO was priced at $9.75 a share and they raised $86 million, Riverbed closed the day Friday trading at $29.79.

This week it was Isilon (ISLN) and Double-Take (DBTK).  Isilon priced their 8,350,000 shares $13 per share and closed the trading day on Friday at $23.10 per share.  Double-Take priced their IPO at $11 a share and closed the Friday at $12.66 a share.

Who’s next?  Companies like 3PAR, BlueArc, Compellent, EqualLogic, LeftHand Networks, Mellanox and Onaro are on deck.  To put this in perspective before the CommVault and Riverbed IPOs the last storage company to go public was Xryratex (XRTX) over two years ago.  It’s obvious that the market is hot and thirsting for aggressive, nimble technology companies. 

The days of consolidation where storage giants like EMC, NetApp, HDS, IBM, etc… gobble up smaller players with great technology are slowing and valuations are on the rise.  I think the post dot.bomb apprehension may have finally begun to fade away.