SolidFire Raises $25 Million to Bring SSDs to the Cloud
Monday, October 31, 2011
Early-Access Program Delivers All-Flash Storage System to the World's Largest Cloud Service Providers
Boulder, Colo. - October 25,
2011 - SolidFire, a provider of all-solid-state (SSD) primary
storage systems for cloud service providers, today announced
that it has raised $25 million in its second funding round,
bringing its total funding to $37 million. NEA, Valhalla Partners,
and Novak Biddle participated in the round. The company also
received individual investments from advisors Frank Slootman,
former CEO of Data Domain, David Schneider, former VP of Worldwide
Sales at Data Domain, and Greg Papadopoulos, Ph.D., former VP and
CTO of Sun Microsystems. Funds will be used for the rapid expansion
of the sales and marketing departments to support growing customer
demand for the company's all-SSD systems in the cloud.
"As an early investor, we are pleased to see the progress that
SolidFire made this past year," said Charles Curran, Valhalla general partner. "They have Early
Access systems deployed with some of the world's largest cloud
service providers and the customer feedback has been
excellent."
"SolidFire has a great head start coupled with deep customer
interest; we are excited to be able to accelerate their execution
in the market," said Harry Weller, NEA general partner. "The SolidFire technology
is extremely advanced and built from the ground-up to leverage the
benefits of an all-SSD platform. Combining the latest in
performance management, real-time data efficiencies, and system
automation, their product is very attractive to cloud service
providers, who can take advantage of this technology today."
"We have been a SolidFire investor from the beginning. Their
ability guarantee storage performance to thousands of volumes
within a shared infrastructure is a powerful capability and we are
impressed by the customer interest and industry recognition that
the company is experiencing," added Phil Bronner, general partner
at Novak
Biddle Venture Partners. "We are looking forward to the
company's expansion in the next few months and we are pleased to
contribute to its success."
"This new funding round and the continued commitment of our
initial investors show that they recognize the potential that
SolidFire has in this market with an all-SSD storage system
optimized for the cloud," said Dave Wright, SolidFire founder and
CEO. "The response to our Early Access Program launched only this
summer has been overwhelming. We have a very solid sales pipeline
and we will be investing in our sales and marketing team to respond
to customer interest and accelerate our growth."
About SolidFire
SolidFire delivers high-performance and high-efficiency primary
storage for cloud service providers. The SolidFire Element™
operating system combines a scale-out all-solid-state architecture
with patented efficiency technologies that dramatically reduce
power, cooling, and capacity consumption. Designed for
operation at cloud-scale, the SolidFire multi-tenant architecture
enables cloud service providers to guarantee sustained performance
to thousands of servers within a single storage system.
Learn more: www.solidfire.com | www.twitter.com/solidfire | www.facebook.com/solidfire.

