SUNNYVALE, CA -- Virsto Software, a software company attempting to transform storage for virtual machines, today announced $12 million in Series B venture capital funding. The funding will be used to drive new growth, product development and expand industry partnerships. In addition, Virsto announced its acquisition of EvoStor, a company specializing in storage virtualization technology for VMware environments, to further deliver on the vision of multi-hypervisor support for reliable, heterogeneous, high-performance and low-cost storage.
The funding was led by InterWest Partners, a diversified venture capital firm in Silicon Valley, which has invested in successful companies such as Marketo, Silicon Graphics (SGI) and Stratacom (STRM; acquired by Cisco). Khaled Nasr, a partner at InterWest who focuses on enterprise IT and data center infrastructure, will join Virsto's board of directors. Previous investors August Capital and Canaan Partners also participated in the round.
Founded in 2007, Virsto has developed the first and only hypervisor-based storage solution built for virtual machines. A close partner of Citrix and Microsoft, the company has a proven track record of advancing storage virtualization in the enterprise. Virsto's software lets all organizations, including enterprise, private and public cloud customers reap the benefits of server and desktop virtualization, increasing performance while lowering storage costs.
Regarding the acquisition of EvoStor, Virsto acquired intellectual property and key team members from that company, deepening Virsto's bench of talent and technology. EvoStor was an early innovator in the VMware storage market, delivering easy-to-deploy, reliable, scalable and affordable solutions. The strong partnership between EvoStor and VMware will benefit Virsto as it readies its software solutions for additional hypervisor platforms. This is a critical market need, as recent surveys show 70% of customers have or are considering multi-hypervisor data centers.
Addressing the Next Wave in Virtualization
Swift enterprise adoption of server virtualization has created unexpected consequences and dramatic increases in associated storage costs. Yet with just half of companies today running virtualized servers, the first wave of virtualization is expected to continue driving storage costs even higher.
The next wave of virtualization will be in storage. Because current storage architectures have not fundamentally changed in 15 years, they are not suited to meet the unique storage demands created by modern virtualized environments. Virsto takes a unique software-only approach to addressing the storage performance, utilization, and management challenges in virtualized server and desktop environments. Its technology is proven with high-end enterprise storage systems as well as low-cost commodity hardware, giving customers the opportunity to improve the effectiveness and return of any installed storage infrastructure.
"Storage virtualization is a $30 billion market that is ripe for disruption,” said Khaled Nasr, partner, InterWest Partners. My partners and I have evaluated hundreds of opportunities in the enterprise sector. Virsto stands out because the company takes a differentiated technical approach to tackling a thorny problem -- an approach that has already shown traction with customer and partner validation. The promise of the core technology combined with the management team's track record makes this a compelling investment opportunity."
"Virsto has shown the potential to reenergize virtual server and desktop projects that were stopped cold when the proposals started rolling in and storage costs became known. While many companies are emerging to try solving the problem of VM storage, Virsto has not only a first mover advantage but also a truly unique approach that's been proven to reduce costs for enterprise and cloud data centers,” said George Crump, lead analyst, Storage Switzerland