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Going loco for co-lo: ClearSky Data's dash for the cash

CEO says startup wants to increase US coverage

Startup ClearSky Data has taken in its second round of venture capital dosh this year with a $27m B-round following an earlier $12m A-round.

The company was only started in 2014, so why, may we ask, the frantic need for the $39m cash pile?

It's 3-tier storage startup whose system involves an on-premises appliance for hot data, warm data storage in a remote ClearSky location up to 120 miles away, and AWS or Azure public cloud storage for colder data.

The on-premises appliance software could run in the public cloud as well. ClearSky has co-location centres in Boston, Las Vegas and Philadelphia.

Data placement across the tiers is automatic and controlled by clever algorithms driven by policies. The software dedupes data and also protects it.

The new money comes from Polaris Partners and Akamai with existing investors General Catalyst and Highland Capital Partners taking part too. CEO Ellen Rubin says the startup has some 40 employees, wants to add more, and wants to increase its coverage in the US and other countries, meaning more co-los, meaning up-front investments.

The pay-off for customers is that they can substantially reduce their on-premises storage, and hence costs. Their storage is in a ClearSky Data public cloud, the co-los, accessed by an on-premise cache/gateway, with transparent movement to the backend public cloud.

This is similar to Nasuni cloud storage gateway arrangement with added second tier co-los.

Beta test results must have been very promising, sufficiently so to get investors to stump up $27m. If this works out, then ClearSky could be looking for an even bigger C-round in 2016/17. ®

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