Scality is betting that its RING software defined storage tech will help enterprises cope with petabyte-scale challenges posed by explosive growth of cloud infrastructures and Big Data solutions.
RING is a distributed, object-based storage software platform that offers enterprises a shared-nothing foundation for their data storage needs with no single point-of-failure, according to the company. Designed to run on commodity x86 hardware, it provides self-balancing, auto-scaling and auto-tiering.
RING’s self-healing features enable it to automatically manage the addition and removal of nodes. Data persistence is supplied by erasure coding with checksum and replication support. Geo-redundancy and wide-ranging API support — namely HTTP REST, RS2, Cinder OpenStack and Hadoop CDMI – round out RING’s capabilities.
In 2011, Scality teamed with hybrid cloud storage vendor CTERA Networks to bring the technology to cloud storage providers and distributed enterprises. “The new partnership ensures customers can rapidly launch scalable cloud-based storage and data protection services with a low total cost of ownership and zero service interruption,” said the companies in a statement.
Two years later, RING’s cloud-savvy architecture is attracting the attention of some big tech investors.
The San Francisco-based storage software startup announced that it had completed a Series C round of financing valued at $22 million. The funds will go toward growing the company’s worldwide marketing and research and development efforts. Menlo Ventures and Iris Capital led the round, which was backed by FSN PME, Idinvest Partners, OMNES Capital and Galileo Partners. To date, Scality has attracted $35 in venture capital.
Citing rapid adoption rates — 400 percent sales growth year-over-year by Scality’s count — the startup is perched on the bleeding edge of fast-growing storage software market, according to Doug Carlisle, managing director of Menlo Ventures. “The intersection of Mobile, Social, Big Data and Cloud Infrastructure is creating a disruption in technology innovation. Scality is leading the disruption in software defined storage technology,” he said in a statement.
Scality counts Time Warner Cable, Host Europe and Libero, an Italian web portal and Internet service provider, among its key customers.
“I have managed several start-ups, but this is the first time I have seen a 5x sales growth on an annual basis. A disruption is happening in the market and we are driving it,” said Scality CEO Jerome Lecat in press remarks.
“We are going to continue growing and are recruiting to sustain this growth, including increasing our investment in R&D,” informed Lecat.
