Lefthand Networks announced this month that they have reached the 3000 customer benchmark. I find this interesting as a formal announcement. Back in June of 2006, over 2 years ago, ESG reported that Lefthand Networks had: (as documented in the following PDF: http://www.lefthandnetworks.com/document.aspx?oid=a0e00000000006xAAA )

LeftHand is one of the best kept secrets in storage
with over 2,000 end-user customers utilizing LeftHand products as their core SAN solution.

Looks like customer counts and unit counts are good things to publish. Back in January of 2006, Lefthand announced reaching 3000 units and 1000 customers. First half of 2006 must have been a great 6 months for LH. I say this because it was only in January of 2006 they had just announced installing into the 1000th customer. (http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-12353975_ITM)

BOULDER, Colo., Jan. 16 /PRNewswire/ — LeftHand Networks(R), the leading provider of complete iSCSI storage area network (SAN) solutions built using patented network storage clustering technology, today announced its 1000th customer installment, surpassing other iSCSI SAN competitors in the market. LeftHand is now the clear technology leader in the Open iSCSI SAN market with over 3,000 systems installed in multiple industries and more than 20 OEMs shipping its SAN/iQ(R) software….

As I continue to research this the news gets more and more interesting. In Feb. of 2008 it was reported that there were 9000 customers, or rather an install base of 9000. (http://www.dciginc.com/2008/02/lefthand-networks-announces-new-virtual-san-a.html)

Over the last few years LeftHand Networks has quietly – or maybe not so quietly – grown its install base to 9000. Like a growing number of storage-centric businesses, it has developed a customer niche in the small and midsize enterprise (SME) market providing economical iSCSI storage products for these environments. However no matter what size customer a storage vendor supports, all storage vendors must now account for the growing presence of VMware virtual machines (VMs) in these environments, and LeftHand Networks is no exception.

Well whatever the numbers actually are, and honestly, they don’t need to be accurate unless you are filing an SEC S-1 in order to go public, the best thing is the information in the most recent blog entry. (http://lefthandnetworks.typepad.com/virtual_view/)

Did you hear? LeftHand hit the 3,000 customer milestone last quarter. That’s more customers than 3PAR, Compellent, and Isilon combined. It’s a real testament to our products and our leadership in storage virtualization.

This shows that the Dell PS-Series storage arrays are leaps and bounds more prevelant in IT shops seeing that we had reached 3000 customers back in early 2007. However, the statement that they claim to be ” the technology industry’s largest pure-play iSCSI SAN vendor” is really only accurate in the fact that Lefthand is one of a couple companies that has ONLY iSCSI products. Most storage and IT vendors have multiple storage products, that support multiple storage protocols. For the record, in revenue and customers, Dell, Inc. leads the industry in iSCSI SAN storage. http://www.thewhir.com/marketwatch/071108_Dell_Leads_Industry_in_iSCSI_SANs.cfm

Market share of twice the nearest closest competitor.