Redundant Networks winds down its business

Redundant Networks, hamstrung by a long sales cycle and a weak national economy, has begun wrapping up its operation.

The Reno-based company probably will be closed in about two months, said Janice Fetzer, its vice president of operations.

Redundant provides highly secure and reliable data hosting from a facility at the Reno-Tahoe Tech Center and a mirror facility at Raleigh, N.C.

The company laid off most of its 12 employees at the end of January, and Fetzer leads a small group that is working these days to help customers find alternative locations for their data centers.

"We want to make sure they have a clean transition," Fetzer said last week.

"The customers have been great, just wonderful."

Many of them, she said, already had other backup locations available.

Some of the customers of Redundant may migrate downstairs in the Reno- Tahoe Tech Center to facilities operated by Twelve Horses North America.

David LaPlante, president and chief executive officer of Twelve Horses, noted that his company's location in the same building as Redundant means his company can easily provide many of the same services.

Fetzer said Redundant was unable to hang on as sales materialized slowly.

The company began operation about two years ago, but spent most of its first year building its data hosting facility at Reno.

Sales efforts began in earnest only about a year ago.

"The product we sell has a very long sales cycle nine months to a year," Fetzer said.

Most potential customers looked at Redundant's services as discretionary, and they weren't in any hurry to spend money on discretionary purchases when the economy was slow.

Even though the national economy is perking up and discretionary spending is on the rise the upturn came too late for Redundant.

"It's not going to improve fast enough to warrant the outlay of money it takes to keep us going," Fetzer said.

Even so, Redundant's executives think the potential deals the company has in the pipeline a flow that Fetzer called "awesome" may attract a company interested in picking up the company.

The sharp reduction in the company's workforce last month might make a deal more attractive, Fetzer said.

At the same time, she said the company's workers would be an attractive asset for an acquisition.

"They're very smart, state-of-the-art people." Twelve Horses, which is looking to fill 10 positions on its staff, will be interviewing some of the former Redundant workers, LaPlante said.

Fetzer said the company is looking to wrap up its affairs as cleanly as possible.

"We're closing it down as well as we built it," she said.