Firm Is Managing Increase in Data

For several years, NovaStor Corp. Chief Executive Officer Peter Means admitted the company was moribund. Now, thanks to companies needing to store more data on large servers to personal electronics gear such as the iPod, the Simi Valley company has entered into boom time. “The demand just shot up over night,” Means said. “It’s just incredible.” NovaStor landed in the top 15 of the San Fernando Valley Business Journal’s fastest growing private companies list based on 52 percent growth from 2004 to 2005. The software firm recorded revenues of $3.8 million in 2004 with an increase to $5.8 million the next year. Through June 30 of this year, it had revenues of $3.6 million. Means founded NovaStor in 1987 after leaving a Valley-based computer hardware firm. His experience there showed him the necessity of software to drive hardware. With small- to medium-sized business accounting for the growth of the computer industry these days that is where NovaStor targets its products. The Linux and Windows marketplaces are the biggest generators of revenue growth for the company, Means said. Its software is made available to device manufacturers and to consumers by download from the company website. Data can be backed up onto a user’s hard drive, onto CDs or DVDs or remotely into NovaStor’s data center. Portable personal devices such as cell phones PDAs that need to have their contents backed up onto a hard drive are also a growing market. “That’s growing quite rapidly,” Means said. “People have 4 or 8 megs of storage or a 30 gigabyte hard drive on their PDA and low and behold they have to back it up somewhere.”