Model9 Secures $9 Million in Series A Funding

Model9 Software, Inc., in cloud data management for mainframes, raised $9 million in series A funding to accelerate market adoption of its data management and business intelligence solutions.

Global 2000 enterprises that rely on mainframe technology can now back up their business-critical data in the cloud and derive the benefits from hybrid cloud technologies and economics.

The round was led by Intel Capital with participation from existing investors StageOne Ventures, North First Ventures and GlenRock Israel Ltd.

The funds will be used to fuel expansion and to enhance start-up’s technology and product offerings, which have been implemented by some of the world’s leading financial services institutes, government agencies and transportation companies.

Mainframes are used as the core computing platform of the world’s largest and most critical businesses. According to IBM, 92 of the world’s top 100 banks, insurance carriers and retail, healthcare and government organizations rely on mainframes, which process 29 billion ATM transactions every year and account for $7.7 trillion in credit card payments annually.

While IT executives in mainframe organizations rank implementing cloud technologies as a priority, staffing, skills shortage and platform capabilities are reported as the main obstacles, resulting in slow adoption of cloud technologies and low usage of mainframe data in business intelligence initiatives.

“We help large enterprises accelerate their implementation of hybrid cloud and reduce the cost and complexity of their mainframe infrastructure, leveraging modern skills,” said Gil Peleg, founder and CEO, formerly at Infinidat and at IBM in charge of mainframe systems and storage development. “The company has been enjoying positive momentum with sales increasing 300% in the last quarter and a long list of prospects.”

“Mainframes store 70% of the world’s business data,” says Anthony Lin, VP and senior MD, Intel Capital. “We identified Model9 as having a first-mover edge with a software-only solution to extract and load mainframe data from the mainframe to any cloud or to any on-prem storage through a standard TCP/IP protocol. This ability opens up a variety of DR, archive and storage use cases, scaling to thousands of companies from the financial and public sectors, among others. Furthermore, Model9’s solution enables conversion of mainframe-compatible file formats to object storage, thus allowing the company’s customers to utilize the latest business analytics, big data and AI solutions to gain insights from previously untapped data sets.”

Model9
Its patented technology delivers mainframe data to any cloud or on-premise storage platform, eliminating tape and virtual tape, and enabling secure integration with analytics tools. Model9 is trusted by the leading financial institutions, government agencies and transportation companies. It is a graduate of the IBM AlphaZone start-up program as well as an AWS Advanced Technology Partner.