Tegile swallows $33m pill at WDC-led party

Hybrid and all-flash array supplier Tegile has had the benefit of Western Digital Corporation largesse, with the flash and disk-making giant leading its latest funding round.

Tegile has picked up a $33m E-round of funding, to be used for product and go-to-market developments. The WDC connection might also have connotations in SSD supply certainty separate from its cash dimension. Its interest in Tegile was high as it led the round, which included cash from current investors Meritech Capital, Capricorn Investment Group and Cross Creek Capital.

The total funding Tegile has accumulated is now $178 million and its approach to using VC cash to fuel growth contrasts with Egnyte's restrained funding approach. That growth has Tegile all-flash array revenue growing 110 per cent year-over-year and it says it's outpacing the market.

CEO Rohit Kshetrapal gave out a quote: "Tegile has always been focused on two main goals: disruptive all-flash technology and sustainable growth. This new investment in Tegile will allow us to continue on this path, all while helping enterprises and businesses of all sizes around the world transition to an all-flash data centre."

Tegile's growth depends upon the company out-innovating the shared storage incumbents like Dell-EMC, HDS, HPE, IBM,NetApp, and newly arrived incumbent Pure – while not being nibbled away at by Kaminario and Tintri – and the emerging fast array access startups like Apeiron, E8 and Excelero.

With hyperconverged infrastructure eating into the on-premises shared storage business, growth to profitability will mean taking more new business and replacing disk drive arrays faster than anyone else. It's a race out there in AFA land. ®