Compellent's three founders had built a storage company once before, and in 2002 they did it again in the Minneapolis suburbs. Their Storage Center was a storage area network that paired clever software with standard hardware. By August 2007 more than 600 companies ran it, in fields from education and government to insurance and media. That October Compellent went public, pitching itself as the simpler, cheaper way to store a lot of data.

Second Time in Eden Prairie

Philip Soran, John Guider and Lawrence Aszmann incorporated Compellent in Minnesota in March 2002. They had earlier founded Xiotech, another storage maker. Compellent's software moved data between fast and cheap disks on its own, so customers paid less for the same capacity. It sold only through channel partners, which kept its own sales force small. The bet was that midsize companies wanted big-company storage without big-company bills.

Dell Pays Double

Compellent priced at $13.50 a share in October 2007 and listed on NYSE Arca as CML. It later moved to the New York Stock Exchange. In December 2010 Dell agreed to buy the company for $27.75 a share in cash, a few months after Dell lost a bidding war with HP for 3PAR, another storage maker. The deal closed in February 2011, and Compellent became part of Dell's storage business.

Cover: The Grain Elevators, Chicago, Joseph Pennell. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for grain elevators (storage).