"This time, the customer traction was the key issue," says Jit Saxena, the company's co-founder and CEO. "That's what got them excited... We've had a lot of great validation of our appliance." [Ed. note: $20 million based on five customer wins? These are some excitable VCs, apparently.]
Netezza expects the new funding, which was an up-round for the company, to bring it to profitability by the end of 2004. Saxena says the startup will use the cash to beef up its sales and marketing initiatives, enhance its partnerships, and add to headcount, The company currently employs 82 people, about 60 percent of whom are in R&D.
Its Performance Server 8000 series, which wraps server, storage, and database functionality into one appliance, started shipping in January this year (see Netezza Spawns a Monster). The appliance offers 10 to 40 times better performance for high-end data warehousing than comparable systems, at roughly half the price, Saxena claims.
"We have massive intelligence right next to the source of data," he says. "And we can lower the cost because we deploy the intelligence right at the source of data instead of wasting CPU cycles."
Because the disks and processing capability are coupled together, the appliance doesn't rely on expensive connectivity or host processing units. Instead, it can use off-the-shelf components, he says.
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