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Cash-laden backers chuck $35 MEELLLION into the clouds

Cloud storage gateway, cloudy backup bods net new funding

Venture capitalists have been tossing money into the burgeoning cloud space with a $10m funding boost to cloud storage gateway upstart Nasuni and the chucking of $25m into cloudy backup firm Druva's burlap sack.

Nasuni's fresh $10m funding round takes its total funding to $53m. Here's the funding history from Crunchbase:

  • Founded April 2009
  • December 2009 - A-round - $8m from North Bridge Venture Partners and Sigma Partners
  • December 2010 - B-round - $15m from North Bridge, Sigma and Flybridge Capital Partners
  • October 2012 - C-round - $20m from Sigma, North Bridge and Flybridge
  • August 2014 - D-round - $10m Flybridge, North Bridge and Sigma plus a strategic investor

Who is the strategic investor? It could be an existing storage supplier or cloud service provider wanting to keep its head down.

Nasuni claims it is growing at a triple digit rate. At the mid-point of 2014 it has already passed sales in the full 2013 year, it says. In its latest quarter, bookings grew 236 per cent over the year-ago quarter.

Last month it unveiled the sixth generation of its software and uprated the processors in its hardware.

Paul Flanagan, a managing director at Sigma Partners, said: “Clearly, we’re excited about the company and have been super impressed with its growth. The opportunity here is enormous and Nasuni is perfectly positioned to take full advantage of IT’s shift to the cloud.”

The extra cash will be used to pump up the engineering, sales and marketing organisations.

Druva

Druva, an end-point backup and file-sharing startup with its InSync products, has also netted new cash. Crunchbase provided a quick view of the Druva money trail:

  • Founded August 2008
  • April 2010 - A-round - $5m from Sequoia Capial and India Angel Network
  • August 2011 - B-round - $12m from Nexus Venture Partners and Sequoia Capital
  • October 2013 - C-round - $25m from from Sequoia Capital, Nexus Venture Partners and Tenaya Capital
  • August 2014 - D-round - $25m from Sequoia Capital, Nexus Venture Partners and Tenaya Capital

Total funding is $67m. Druva says the new $25m will be used for "expanding the company’s focus on managing data outside the corporate firewall." More specifically, it will pay for research and development for "new inSync enhancements, diversification of the Druva product portfolio, and further expansion into global markets."

Druva is growing quickly too: since October 2013 it has grown its enterprise customer base from 2,100 to 3,000 "with 2.8 million devices in 76 countries now under protection".

New customers include Dell, Hitachi, Kronos, Pfizer, Reckitt Benkhiser, RHI, and Shire.

Shailendra Singh, managing director at Sequoia Capital India Advisors, who has served on the board of Druva since early 2010, gave out a canned quote: "More and more corporate data resides outside the firewall with little or no protection. This is an emerging market with virtually unlimited growth potential, and the fact that Druva is in the pole position has been validated by terrific sales growth and client adoption, multiple global awards as well as favourable analyst reports."

He added: "We’re optimistic it will dominate what promises to be an increasingly important IT category.”

Chris says

Good job such protection and file sharing isn't going through Nasuni devices to the cloud. With InSync able to use Amazon's cloud, perhaps Nasuni might provide cloud storage gateway software to run on devices outside the corporate firewall. Then we'll see Druva and Nasuni in direct competition. ®

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