Storage hardware startup BlueArc Corp. has won $72 million in a third round of financing, which will no doubt send a shiver down the spines of its key rivals, public-market stars Network Appliance Inc. (Nasdaq: NTAP), and EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC). The funding sends a strong message to the market that BlueArc's new approach to network-attached storage is gaining momentum.
The round was led by Weston Presidio Capital and previous BlueArc investors Celtic House International, Apax Partners & Co., and Patricof & Co. Ventures Inc. Also joining this round were Dell Ventures, Euroqube, New York State Retirement Co-Investment Fund, J.P. Morgan & Co. (Nasdaq: JPM), and Fort Washington Capital. Including the $72 million, the company has secured over $100 million in funding so far.
Charlie Noreen, CFO for BlueArc told LightReading, "This is just the endorsement we needed to bring our product to market. It sends a pretty strong signal when other public companies in our space have had their valuations slashed in recent months." BlueArc expects to start shipping its recently introduced Si7500 storage server this quarter.
The Si7500 is a giant of a system that uses specialized chips capable of delivering 2000-Mbit/s throughputs. The result, it claims, is the first storage server capable of keeping up with the speed of optical networks.
The Si7500 connects Fibre Channel storage arrays at the back end of the network with network-attached gigabit Ethernet computer systems at the front end. The company says its architecture supports 100 times as many simultaneous connections and 30 times the storage capacity from a single system as rival network-attached storage products -- namely, from Network Appliance and EMC.
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