GigaOM » Scale Computing

When It Rains, It Pours (Cash) for Storage Startups

Derrick Harris — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 01:05:11 +0000

It seems like when it rains for cloud storage startups, it pours, and this week was no exception. Egnyte closed a $10 million round led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, Scality closed a $7 million round led by IdInvest Partners, and RightScale chose Gluster to provide scale-out NAS within RightScale’s cloud management platform. The concept of big data (i.e., storing and analyzing large amounts of data) gets a lot of press — in fact, we’re putting on an entire event around it — but the huge amounts of money being poured into storage companies utilizing cloud architectures prove there’s still plenty of demand for fast, cheap and scalable file storage.

Since I covered three startups scoring a combined $30 million in three days’ time in November, the spending and funding has only picked up. SolidFire scored $11 million, Nasuni got $15 million, Scale Computing closed $17 million and Cirtas stole the show with $22.5 million. And don’t forget Isilon, the clustered file system vendor that sold to EMC for $2.25 billion. For Gluster, which contributed $8.5 million of that three-day splurge in November, RightScale is its second big-name, cloud-based customer win of the new year, as it announced Pandora as a customer in January.

With so many cloud storage startups flying about, I’d be lying if I said it isn’t getting difficult to keep track of which one does what. But I don’t think I’ll have that problem for long. Just like consolidation started among cloud computing startups over the past several months, cloud storage consolidation can’t be far behind. Then, the problem will be keeping track of who bought whom, and for how much. Still, I suspect a bit more investment before that happens, but there are a handful of startups in this field that appear too valuable to stay independent for long.

Related Content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

Big Data, ARM and Legal Troubles Transformed Infrastructure in Q4

Tue, 18 Jan 2011 08:00:26 +0000

Some might call this past quarter in the infrastructure space transformative. The rise of ARM-based processing suggests the days of x86 dominance might be coming to an end, while the Amazon Web Services-WikiLeaks controversy cast new light on the legal aspects of cloud computing. Big data got bigger, meanwhile, as the Hadoop ecosystem expanded, and amid all these cutting-edge technologies, two archaic topics — Novell and Java — proved they aren’t going anywhere soon. Companies mentioned in this report include Intel, AMD, Amazon Web Services, IBM, Yahoo, Appistry, VMware, Joyent and Microsoft. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial.

Venture Capital's Data Side Story

Om Malik — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:00:08 +0000

From new data stores to large-scale databases to cloud-based storage services, it seems VC dollars these days are primarily flowing into two important (if somewhat unsexy) technology sectors: storage and big data. Which make sense, given that the continuous digitization of everything is resulting in a proverbial explosion of structured and unstructured data, in turn placing the systems under new kinds of stress. Here are some of the recent fundings that bring this trend into focus:

* Scale Computing just raised $9 million in funding in its second round that was led by by Benchmark Capital.

* Pivot3, a company that provides virtualized servers and storage, raised $25 million from Focus Ventures and other investors.

* RainStor, a structured data software company, today raised $7.5 million in Series B funding from Storm Ventures and Informatica.

We’ve been keeping track of this trend for nearly two years. So in order to get more context, check out these posts from our archives:

* Storage Startups Turn Cache Into Cash
* Who Will Cache in on Cloud Storage
* The Future Is Big Data in the Cloud
* Why Big Data & Real-time Web Are Made for Each Other.
* How Yahoo, Facebook, Amazon & Google Think About Big Data