Storwize Secures $9 Million in Latest Funding Round
Investment by Sequoia Capital to help meet soaring demand for Storwize’s unique primary storage
SAN JOSE, Calif., June 6, 2007 – Storwize Inc., the only provider of innovative online storage compression solutions, today announced that it has closed a $9 million round of funding with leading venture capital firm Sequoia Capital. The Series B funding will be leveraged by Storwize to boost the company’s ability to meet the soaring demand for its solutions by organizations looking to benefit from its patent pending data compression technology to maximize their network infrastructure at a fraction of their current cost.
The investment by Sequoia enables Storwize to aggressively expand its sales and marketing teams in the US and worldwide to meet soaring demand. The Storwize unique primary data compression solutions, which were first introduced into computing environments around the world at the end of 2005, offer companies significant operating expense reductions such as: fewer hardware devices acquired and under management, reduced network traffic, and less power consumption and floor space. Additional benefits include: storage performance improvements as well as shorter backup and restore windows.
“Our investment strategy is to search out those companies that we believe will have the greatest impact in the industry in which they perform,” said Shmil Levy, Sequoia Partner. “We believe Storwize to be that market disrupter and feel that their leadership in the data compression industry is something that will not soon be overcome. Our careful assessment of Storwize and their innovative
take on storage dilemmas facing enterprises today allows us to enter into this partnership with full confidence of their future success.”
“We are honored to have Sequoia join as investors after we’ve navigated a successful company launch where we’ve already shipped our solutions to customers all around the world ,” said Gal Naor, CEO of Storwize. “Unlike other vendors who claim to be coming into the same technology market as we are, Storwize is the only company with a working solution available for purchase today and one that is well proven. As we continue to meet the soaring market demand for this innovative solution, our partnership with Sequoia will help us to scale our production to move up to the next stage of delivering technology that helps customers store as much as five times more data with no performance degradation.”
Storwize’s third-generation data compression appliances, which feature no workflow changes, no software agents, no drivers and no configuration changes, are available through more than 30 reseller and OEM partners throughout the world, with the company gradually increasing its geographical coverage to meet sales demand. Storwize maintains relationships with its customer base by providing dedicated pre- and post-sale support. The company has applied for 18 worldwide patents, which are pending for its NAS, iSCSI and Fibre Channel applications. Only Storwize offers a real-time, universal, transparent and direct-access solution.
ABOUT STORWIZE
Storwize, Inc. is the only provider of online data compression solutions that dramatically boost storage space on network storage environments. Storwize appliances are installed between the organization’s storage arrays and their network. Designed to work with any storage array it is connected to, the Storwize appliance typically provides organizations with 2-5X additional capacity with associated savings in capital, operational, maintenance and management resources. Storwize solutions have been shipped to customer sites worldwide and successfully tested for interoperability with leading storage vendors such as EMC and NetApp. Privately held and headquartered in San Jose, Calif, Storwize is a member of the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) and has gained an ISO 9001:2000 certification. For more information, visit www.storwize.com.About Sequoia Capital
Sequoia Capital provides venture capital funding to founders of startups who want to turn business ideas into companies. As the "Entrepreneurs Behind the Entrepreneurs", Sequoia Capital's Partners have worked with innovators such as Steve Jobs of Apple Computer, Larry Ellison of Oracle, Bob Swanson of Linear Technology, Sandy Lerner and Len Bozack of Cisco Systems, Dan Warmenhoven of Network Appliance, Jerry Yang and David Filo of Yahoo!, Jen-Hsun Huang of nVIDIA, Michael Marks of Flextronics, Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen of YouTube and Dominic Orr and Keerti Melkote of Aruba Wireless Networks. To learn more about Sequoia Capital visit www.sequoiacap.com.
Contact:
Shmil Levy
SEQUOIA CAPITAL
shmil@sequoiacap.com
