MYSTERY sugar daddies showering flash upstart Tegile in gold named
Just who slammed millions of dollars into mutant array slinger? Now we know
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Western Digital and SanDisk have been named as the two investors that just ploughed millions of dollars into hybrid flash array startup Tegile.
Tegile's Zebi flash-disk array uses WD subsidiary HGST's disks and solid-state drives. With the WD funding, Tegile and HGST have a joint technology development. The companies are chasing greenbacks in the server virtualisation, VDI, database hosting and file services arenas.
Both WD and SanDisk piled into Tegile's $35m C-round, although the identities of the two investors have only just emerged.
Mark Long, president of Western Digital Capital, said: “Tegile has developed advanced solutions leveraging the combined strengths of HDD and SSD technology.”
Very good. And SanDisk? Sumit Sadana, an executive veep and SanDisk's chief strategy officer, said: “We believe Tegile is well positioned.”
Looks like HGST and SanDisk will be slugging it out to get the Tegile flash supply contract.
Tegile's CEO Rohit Kshetrapal was even-handed in his canned comment: "We welcome flash industry leader SanDisk as a strategic partner and investor in Tegile.”
The C-round cash will be used to "strengthen [Tegile's] sales and customer support efforts throughout its North American and European channels and to accelerate its new product/technology development". It says it has more than 300 customers using its Zebi arrays. With this cash it must be looking at getting hundreds more. ®
