Time For A Change: Why 31-year-old CMT Became DataEndure

Rebranding can be a long, complex process.

Just ask the folks at DataEndure, a Santa Clara, Calif.-based solution provider which, for 31 years, was known as Computer Media Technologies, or CMT, before it changed its name early this year.

DataEndure CEO Kurt Klein told IT Best of Breed that it was time to change the company name to reflect business changes over the last three decades.

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The Computer Media Technologies name served his company and its customers well, but he said the time had come to have a brand that focuses on the business' core services and not on the media and hardware platforms that, in past decades, provided the bases for the services.

"We felt it was time to better represent the company going forward," Klein said. "CMT represented media. We sell very little media. We felt we needed to find something that represented what we do."

Rebranding to bring a company in line with its goals is one of several reasons a business may rebrand. Other reasons include a merger or a need to inject new life into a company.

Klein said it was important that the new company name represent its four future-facing primary business areas: security, storage, information management and data center infrastructure. "We have in the last few years had an increasing emphasis on security," he said. "We've done security for a long time. But if you ask a customer if we are a security integrator, they might say they don't know."

CMT engaged a branding consultant as part of what turned out to be a very thorough and "stimulating" process to find the right name for the company. That process looked at hundreds of potential names, Klein said.

The initial search got things going but didn’t result in a new brand, Klein said. "It got the creative genius going," he said. "We didn't use his ideas, but it was a good exercise."

Eventually, the company went to Pearson & Co., a Campbell, Calif.-based provider of sales tools and programs for business-to-business companies, Klein said. "The owner looked at what we were doing and came up with the name," he said. "And fortunately, it was a name that hadn't been used anywhere else in the industry."

With the new "DataEndure" brand came a new logo as well, one that includes the company name with a stylized mountain in the background.

"The mountain represents digital resilience and a holistic approach to architecting a data protection strategy," Klein said. "We offer many solutions, all focused on customer needs. And the mountain is like an umbrella over a customer’s data. We feel this is what the brand evokes."

Klein declined to discuss the cost of the rebranding process, but said that for a company whose sales have risen from $8 million to $100 million in the last 20 years, the cost was negligible.

"We needed to adapt our look and feel to our customer strategy," he said. "So, when you look at a six-figure rebranding, it's not so much in perspective, it is a time-consuming process. But it helps re-invigorate employees."

It was important to get the message about the new branding out not only to customers but also employees. To get employees excited about the re-branding, Klein said DataEndure held an internal contest to find the employee who could best articulate the change. "The winner got a seven-day trip to Puerto Vallarta," the Mexican beach resort, he said.