Barracuda Networks - History

History

Barracuda Networks was established in 2003 and introduced the Barracuda Spam and Virus Firewall. In 2007 the company moved its headquarters to Campbell, California, and opened an office in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

In January 2006, it closed its first outside investment of $40 million from Sequoia Capital and Francisco Partners. Sequoia Capital had previously provided financing to Cisco Systems, Google, Netscreen, and Yahoo!.

On January 29, 2008, Barracuda Networks was sued by Trend Micro over their use of the open source anti-virus software Clam AntiVirus, which Trend Micro claimed to be in violation of their patent on 'anti-virus detection on an SMTP or FTP gateway'. In addition to providing samples of prior art in an effort to render Trend Micro's patent invalid, in July 2008 Barracuda launched a countersuit against Trend Micro claiming Trend Micro violated several antivirus patents Barracuda Networks had acquired from IBM.

In December 2008, the company launched the BRBL (Barracuda Reputation Block List), its proprietary and dynamic list of known spam servers, for free and public use in blocking spam at the gateway. Soon after opening BRBL many IP addresses got blacklisted without apparent reason and without any technical explanation.

As of October 2009, Barracuda had over 85,000 customers. As of November, 2011, Barracuda had more than 130,000 customers. As of January, 2012, Barracuda had more than 150,000 customers.

In 2012, the company became a co-sponsor of the Garmin-Barracuda UCI ProTour cycling team and entitlement sponsor of the 2011 Indianapolis 500 champion Bryan Herta Autosport in the IZOD IndyCar Series, with the #98 Lotus driven by Alex Tagliani, who will defend the team's championship.

Barracuda Networks continued to grow its research and development facility in Ann Arbor, expanding to a 12,500 square foot office building on Depot St. in 2008. By 2012, the Michigan based research division had grown to about 180 employees, again outgrowing its physical space. In June, 2012, Barracuda signed a lease to occupy the 45,000 square foot office complex previously used as the Borders headquarters on Maynard St in downtown Ann Arbor, announcing it is expecting to grow the office to 400 employees in the next five years.

In July 2012, Dean Drako, Barracuda Networks’s co-founder, president and CEO since it was founded in 2003, resigned his operating position, remaining on the company’s board of directors. At the time of Drako’s departure, the company stated it had achieved profitability, a nearly ongoing 30 annual percent growth rate since inception, 150,000 customers worldwide, nearly 1,000 employees, 10 offices worldwide, and did business in 80 countries. The company created the office of the CEO as it started a CEO search.