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Data center management software firm Cassatt is “close to the end,” stated founder and CEO Bill Coleman in a Forbes article. Coleman is well-known in Silicon Valley, having served as a senior exec in the early days of Sun Microsystems and as one of the co-founders of middleware company BEA systems. The ambitions with Cassatt were huge, but now (after raising $100 million in capital) the company is apparently having trouble even selling itself to one of the majors it aimed to compete with.

From the article:

“The big guys copied my story,” says Coleman. Cassatt, he adds, was upended by a slowing economy and by customers skittish about closing big orders or changing existing ways.

“What frustrates me is my own naivete,” he says. “I thought I could give companies something radical that had a proven return on investment, and they would be willing to change all their companies’ computer policies and procedures to get that. Right now it’s hard to get people to get beyond proof of concept tests or a data center energy analysis.”

And it concludes:

For his own part, though, Coleman says, “I have to think about my people. Then I’m going to a beach for a month to think about what to do next.”

We wish Coleman all the best.

Here’s a video interview we conducted with the man in the Summer of 2008:

PART 1

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PART 2