What Happens to Smapper

We recently remarked that the Web site of Smapper (now Smapper Technologies, Inc.) was closed. It’s a start-up launched in 2005 in Kufstein, Austria that got $10 million in financial funding in 2007 and was founded by NetApp executives, including CEO Gunther Thiel, formerly manager solution sales Central EMEA at NetApp. The company had at this time the innovative idea of an appliance with FAN (File Area network) software and was later in contact with Fujitsu and NetApp as OEMs.

Smapper company exhibited three times at CeBIT but was very secret about its new storage file system and its business. Each year, on the booth, being journalist, we couldn’t see a demo of the product and we got about no answer to our questions. Last time – in 2008 -, we were supposed to meet the CEO, but, for obscure reasons, the appointment was finally canceled.

Few days ago, we asked Smapper’s VP marketing Joan Wrabetz about the situation of the company. She answered by email: "I apologize for the confusion. We are in the process of re-branding the company while we are in stealth mode. The new temporary site is up now. We will be coming back out of stealth mode over the coming months. You can follow us on Facebook or Linkedin or Twitter for future updates."

A completely new web site has been effectively re-opened with a minimum of information. We have remarked the name of a new CEO, Gabe Gotthard, apparently since July 2009 – but on Linkedin Thiel continues to be listed as CEO of Smapper… Gotthard was advisor to exec team at Adaptec, Panasas, and to CEO and exec team at ONStor, after being VP marketing and alliances for 3par and marketing manager at HP. On a blog submitted May 20, 2011, he wrote: "Here at Smapper, we’ve brought together a team of storage and networking experts from Brocade, NetApp, 3PARData, Onstor, Quantum and StorageTek to create a new way of managing storage called ‘Storage Performance Virtualization’. The team is growing fast and we are still looking for top-notch engineers and leaders. Please follow us on Twitter and Facebook to be notified when we launch and get updates on our progress. Until then, we’ll be cranking away developing the next big innovation in virtualization."

As we remarked also on the new web site, Smapper is not anymore headquartered in Austria but in Santa Clara, CA. It is supposed to have 11 employees and currently recruiting, according to Linkedin.

Six years after its inception, the start-up seems to restart from zero.