History 2004: Profile of Start-Up Crosswalk

Company:
Crosswalk

Founded in:
2004

HQs:
Westminster, CO

Web:
crosswalkinc.com 

Chairman and CEO:
Jack McDonnell

Investors:
Jack McDonnell, among others

Activity:
Storage management software for SMBs

Comments:
Jack McDonnell is the founder, he who founded McData (and gave it its Mc- on a whim, so legend holds- at the moment of incorporation) in 1982 and where he spent 21 years as chairman and CEO before giving way to his successor as CEO, John Kelley in August 2002.

The HQ of the new venture of roughly 50 people is, not surprisingly, fairly close to McData’s Broomfield facility, the Jack McDonnell corporate office building. McDonnell is also the principal investor, thanks to his McData shares.

Among the other executives of Crosswalk, we find others who hail from McData, such as CTO Rob Kelley or VP of solutions Mark Stratton.

The aim of the start-up is to offer a simple and low-cost storage management software for SMBs with 5 to 200 servers. To achieve this, it has built on SANavigator, which it licensed from McData, as well as Tek-Tools SRM, in order to offer Crosswalk Storage Manager software, based on CIM specifications. Pricing starts at $5,000.

For the distribution, the firm hopes to go through VARs and SIs rather than storage equipment manufacturers.

Among its first users is the St. Clair County (Ml) Community Mental Health Authority.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 202 on November 2004 from the former paper version of Computer Data  Storage Newsletter.

Note: Company closed its door in 2007.