Lexington, Mass.-based ownCloud announced today that it had closed on a second round of seed financing worth $2.5 million.
ownCloud is a storage startup whose open source platform allows organizations to offer secure, Drobox-like file sharing and synchronization capabilities to their workforces via IT systems that they control and manage. According to the company, over 650,000 users now trade files over its platform.
In April, the company rolled out its first commercial editions. The Business tier supports up to 50 users while the Enterprise version can accommodate up to 250 and be deployed by OEMs as a self-branded service. Last month, ownCloud 4.5 expanded the platform’s storage management umbrella by rolling out support for mounting third party storage, enabling IT shops to also leverage services like Amazon S3 and Google Drive.
According to the company’s founder and CTO of ownCloud’s commercial arm, Frank Karlitschek, the next major release is due before the end of the year. In October, Karlitschek told Sean Michael Kerner of InternetNews, “The major new feature will be strong client-side and server-side encryption.”
ownCloud plans to keep the momentum going by using the funds to target the enterprise and education market and expand its channel partner program, which currently has 70 members. The company also hopes to grow its support services for ownCloud-based storage providers.
Larry Bohn, managing director of General Catalyst, the venture capital firm that headed the round, said that ownCloud’s take on file syncing and sharing rises above a jam-packed cloud storage landscape.
“There’s no one in this increasingly crowded market that can do the things ownCloud does – integrate closely with existing IT, innovate at lightning speed and offer choice of storage locations. With those capabilities already in place, differentiating it from the competition, we’re confident that ownCloud will succeed,” explained Bohn in a company statement.
Bohn joins the company on its board of directors in the wake of the transaction.
