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Who the funk is Hive-IO? It's where Atlantis assets have buzzed off to

Hyperconverged, VDI startup nibbles bits off software-defined storage supplier

Hive-IO has bought certain assets of Atlantis Computing, a struggling supplier of VDI and hyperconverged infrastructure software, for undisclosed financial terms.

Atlantis found itself in difficulties and was in financial negotiations about its future in late June.

New York-based and early-stage startup Hive-IO's website is quite new – witness this About page with placeholder text.

It is having a significant funding round to pay for the acquisition. The company was founded in 2015, when it had a $1.8m A-round from Rally Ventures. The Atlantis acquisition round will be a B-round involving "significant investments from leading funds" and be, we think, in the $10m-plus area. This will pay for the asset purchase and also provide working capital.

Hive-IO launched its software back in November 2015, saying it is producing a software-defined Infrastructure-as-a-Service offering for SMBs. It included VDI, virtualized servers, infrastructure, storage, and security.

Its latest V6.9 hyperconverged software release provides VDI facilities through Citrix XenDesktop. Co-founder and CEO Joe Makoid said: "VDI initiatives have gained a reputation for being costly, time-consuming, difficult to architect, and, worst of all, prone to failure. With the ability to run XenDesktop on Hive-IO's hyperconverged infrastructure, many of the common pain points are alleviated, while giving business owners confidence that their end-users will experience superior performance."

Makoid claims Hive-IO is the fastest-growing company in the hyperconverged infrastructure market.

We understand Hive-IO came out of the US banking industry with exposure to many Atlantis customers. It knows the Atlantis product very well, with Makoid saying: "Chetan and the team did an excellent job" but "they got a little bit ahead of themselves".

Atlantis Computing was started up in 2009 and took in $35m in funding with four rounds. Hive is buying some Atlantis assets, not the company.

It is getting Atlantis's software-defined storage technology. This will expand Hive-IO's storage offering and increase performance and capacity to help lower the cost of VDI deployments. The company thinks that the Atlantis tech eliminates the inefficiencies of SAN and NAS hardware by providing faster and cheaper processing in the software layer with software-defined storage.

It should provide, Hive-IO reckons, better storage performance at a fraction of the cost of current products. Its customers can ensure their storage systems have targeted availability levels that adapt resilience based on the importance of the data or system, which, Hive says, lowers the cost of business continuity.

Kevin McNamara, Hive's CTO and co-founder, said: "Managing a storage environment in a SDDC (software-defined data centre) is expensive and complex. By integrating the Hive-IO Utility Fabric with Atlantis products, we can offer our customers a software solution that has always been addressed by adding more hardware. Hyperconvergence and VDI creates the ideal combination for our customers."

Makoid said: "The move to acquire Atlantis Computing assets is crucial to Hive-IO for a number of reasons. Atlantis is a pioneer in hyperconverged infrastructure and VDI and brings Hive-IO its leading technology, experienced people, and over 800 customers. The transaction will provide for a powerful solution right out of the gate and will be enhanced as we combine the two technologies into one cohesive platform."

We understand Atlantis founder, president and CEO Chetan Venkatesh won't be joining Hive-IO while VP worldwide sales guy David Cumberworth will, as well as many of other Atlantis employees as is prudent from Hive-IO's point of view. ®

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