GlassHouse Pulls IPO Plans

The Framingham, Mass.-based company intends to withdraw its registration statement on Form S-1 as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

GlassHouse's IPO withdrawal marks the second time the company has filed for and withdrawn an IPO in recent years. GlassHouse first filed in 2007 for a $100 million IPO, a plan that was withdrawn in 2009.

GlassHouse's most recent IPO push, which called for a $75 million IPO, was filed in 2010 and withdrawn this week, the company said. GlassHouse had planned to use the $75 million for working capital and general corporate purposes, and to pay for acquisition-related loans.

"Obviously the economic climate continues to be volatile, and we feel these are not the optimal conditions for GlassHouse to move forward with an IPO," Patrick J. Scannell, Jr., GlassHouse CEO, said in a statement. "We are focused on being the leader in vendor independent services that provide strategy and operational support for our customers as they confront rapidly evolving end-user, cost and security demands on their IT environments."

The IPO withdrawal comes just weeks after GlassHouse tapped Scannell as its new chief executive. Scannell, a former Netezza executive, was picked to lead GlassHouse into the growing and evolving cloud computing market. He replaced Mark Shirman, who was asked to step down by the GlassHouse board after more than a decade at the solution provider's helm.

During his time with Netezza, Scannell was instrumental in leading the company through an IPO in July 2007 and later through Netezza's roughly $2 billion acquisition by IBM in 2010.

At the time of Scannell's appointment as CEO, GlassHouse said that the new top executive's charge would not be to focus on building an IPO, but instead to guide GlassHouse's cloud services strategy.

"Taking the company public is not currently our main focus, growing our company is," Jay Seaton, vice president of worldwide marketing for GlassHouse, said at the time.