Axcient Scores $6 Million in First Funding Round
A start-up in data protection and business continuity for SMBs
This is a Press Release edited by StorageNewsletter.com on April 3, 2009 at 4:13 pmAxcient Inc. has secured $6 million in Series A funding from investors Allegis Capital and Peninsula Ventures. The funding will be used to further enhance Axcient’s platform, grow operations, expand sales and marketing initiatives, and better serve Axcient’s expanding customer base.
"Axcient’s technology has the potential to seriously disrupt the SMB data backup and recovery market. In today’s economy, outsourced IT professionals need to increase their revenue per customer while reducing investments in infrastructure. Axcient offers one of the most compelling ways to do that. We are very impressed with Axcient’s technology solution and the team behind it, and that’s why we invested in the company," said Pete Bodine, managing director, Allegis Capital.
"The Axcient team brings great insight and expertise to resolving the data protection and business continuity challenges that SMBs are faced with today," said Greg Robinson, managing director, Peninsula Ventures. "We believe the Axcient solution is important because of its ability to help customers increase productivity and uptime, mitigate the risk of losing critical data, and eliminate capital expenditures. We look forward to working with Justin and his team in creating a successful partnership."
Axcient’s executive bench includes CEO Justin Moore, CTO Dave Garnett, Vice President of Sales Victor Neeley, and Vice President of Engineering Bill Culman. Neeley joined Axcient from Seagate Services (formerly known as EVault), where he served as vice president of sales; he brings more than 20 years of SMB sales management experience to Axcient. Culman held senior engineering positions developing both software and hardware products at Interwoven, Cast Iron, Tandem Computers, BEA Systems, and Vitria Technology.
"Trying macroeconomic times demand service models that free the customer from large upfront investments," said Justin Moore, CEO, Axcient. "We’ve been in development for the past two years to produce a data protection and business continuity platform that is built from the ground up to meet the unique business needs of the SMB market and the IT solution providers who serve them. We’re proud to have the confidence of top-tier investors in the company and are excited about executing on our vision."
The Series A funding coincides with the availability of Axcient’s hybrid on-premise and cloud data protection and business continuity service. Axcient’s data backup and recovery service was created specifically for SMBs that are managing anywhere from 1 to 500 workstations, laptops or servers and 10 gigabytes to 10 terabytes of data. The company is targeting customers across industries including legal, financial services, healthcare, design and creative industries, retail, credit card services, Web-based companies, and education.
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Born in 2007 and located in Mountain View, CA, Axcient said it is currently protecting over 100,000,000 files.
It offers three products:
- RapidRestore for backup services
- SmartArchive for retention services
- SmartDR for DR services
Its hybrid service includes online backup and an appliance for local backup starting around $100 per month.
Axcient's CEO Justin Moore built in 2002 MK Global, which innovated an
international approach to addressing the surplus of secondary market
telecommunications equipment after the dot-com collapse. VP of sales Victor Neeley occupies most recently the same position at Seagate Services, formerly EVault.
Its advisor's team comprises two storage veterans:
- Dave Loewith is VP engineering at Powerfile and formerly served as VP of engineering and operations at EVault, where he built and led an engineering team that produced products and an operations group that provisioned the SaaS. He was previously VP of information protection at Legato and was a key factor in its purchase by EMC.
- Brad O’Neill, current CEO and co-founder of TechValidate, headed business development at PolyServe, an enterprise server and storage software company (acquired by HP for $205 million), and led formerly corporate development at StorageNetworks, an enterprise storage service provider that he helped launch and build to IPO before the public company collapsed. Brad also worked as a technology analyst in the data center IT sector with Taneja Group, where he consulted dozens of emerging technology companies regarding IT market strategy.