Today WhipTail, maker of the world's first and most widely deployed all-flash
enterprise class storage array, announced it has secured a Series B round of
funding to continue to fuel its accelerated growth in the global IT marketplace.
New York-based venture capital firm RRE Ventures led the round, with Ignition
Partners and Spring Mountain Capital also participating.
"For the past decade, data storage performance has not kept pace with the
continuing evolution of technology the way CPUs and networks have. And with the
increasing demand for storage it doesn't make sense for companies to just buy
more capacity," said Will Porteous, general partner of RRE Ventures. "Instead of
continuing to add more hard disks, IT executives need to look at the storage
solution WhipTail brings to the table. The company is selling performance, which
is a valuable proposition to the enterprise. I look forward to joining the board
of this truly innovative company."
Over 100 customers, including AMD, The Pension's
Trust, Ohio.gov, Weichert and inVentiv Health have installed WhipTail's
enterprise flash storage array to address performance problems in the
enterprise. Once installed, customers come back for more arrays to support
additional applications -- over a third of the company's revenue comes from
repeat business.
"WhipTail is the only company to have delivered all-flash-based storage
arrays to the commercial and enterprise IT environments for the last two years,
pure and simple," said Dan Crain, CEO, WhipTail. "We have been quietly executing
for some time, addressing the storage bottleneck for high performance enterprise
applications. This funding will help us continue to innovate and lead the solid
state storage market, as well as turn up the volume on the key advantages we
deliver."
"We are excited about WhipTail's remarkable progress, and to be able to add
such a distinguished group of investors to WhipTail's board as are Will Porteous
of RRE Ventures and Richard Fade of Ignition Partners," commented Raymond Wong,
Managing Director and head of Spring Mountain Capital's private equity group.
WhipTail will use the financing to expand the company's sales and marketing
efforts, as well as support additional product development. Sales efforts are
being ramped up in the U.S., Europe and Asia through hiring, strategic
partnerships, reseller programs and marketing support to the channel.
In addition to Porteous, Ignition's Richard Fade will join Spring Mountain
Capital's Raymond Wong and Avi Faliks on the WhipTail board of directors,
effective immediately. Spring Mountain Capital has been a majority investor in
WhipTail since July 2011, when it led the company's first round of financing.
"We believe WhipTail's technology is at the forefront of all-flash-based
storage arrays, the new standard for the industry," said Richard Fade, partner,
Ignition Partners.