While it seems everyone’s talking about Twitter and their IPO, Barracuda Networks debuted on the New York Stock Exchange today with their own IPO under their trading ticker symbol CUDA. Wall St. responded by boosting the value in trading by as much as twenty percent and at the end of the day Barracuda raised upwards of $75 Million from 4.1 million shares with over one billion in market cap.  Security is one of the hottest sectors in the technology business right now and Barracuda has emerged as a market leader.

Barracuda’s potential – huge

The company provides easy-to-use security and storage services for the mid-market and SMBs. Their lineup of end-to-end simple solutions empowers customers to implement cutting edge enterprise technologies. While security, backup, and cloud products comprise some extremely competitive markets, the company has built their brand aiming for the mid-market.

In a briefing today with Barracuda CEO, President and Director BJ Jenkins, it is rather clear that the message, product and delivery are centered around the needs of the customer in every facet possible. From Barracuda’s initial foray into anti-spam and anti-virus to the range of products available today, attention has been paid to using as much commodity architecture as possible, this creates a cost-efficient research and development profile. Barracuda built their own cloud for backups and advanced security services, with their own file system that extends into many petabytes, all for the benefit of keeping the costs to the customer low and the customer value high. One key to that is making the products simple to integrate, manage and deploy. Other vendors chase larger and larger clientele and their products become linearly more complex because of this.

We started Barracuda with a single product – our Spam & Virus Firewall – and over the past 10 years have expanded this to more than a dozen offerings. We have demonstrated our ability to expand from a single product company to one with a comprehensive portfolio of award-winnings solutions and proven success in driving innovation.
Our cloud-connected solutions only work with a subscription and that drives our SaaS-like model which gives us high levels of recurring revenue visibility.

A high performer road

Based out of Campbell, CA, the company plans on expanding their growth with the proceeds, expanding their channel and investing in more research and development, all on their road to profit. The company has also enjoyed a positive cash flow since the first month of the business, and has seen incredible growth over the last several years. Over 70% of their revenue is currently subscription based, a figure that is ever-increasing and their customer retention is astronomically high. The company reports gross margins of around 80% and has a history of outstanding revenue performance. The opportunity Barracuda sees is an addressable market in security and storage of $30 billion.  Jenkins states that customer’s biggest security concerns continue to be email, web and automated threats.  Next-generation technology addresses a variety of leading security issues and features solutions to protect web apps, social media threats and provide malware protection.

Powerful marketing

The company’s rise has been accompanied by a multi-faceted marketing plan. Engineered to specifically reach out to the mid-market and SMB, ads can be found in airports, on the radio and in publications. They also have a significant digital plan that puts them in front of the audience they want, through avenues like LinkedIn, Google, etc. and partner marketing campaigns. This model been proven successful worldwide as their 150,000 customer base clearly indicates.

Barracuda’s 1,100 worldwide employees across 15 countries have built a platform that speaks to practical notions while delivering on business needs. This is incredibly important and it’s little surprise that in a world where there is an increasingly sophisticated and complex technology spectrum, that a company could step in, deliver exceptional value and make it public by executing that plan successfully for thousands of customers around the world.