Start-Up BizangaStore Becomes Scality

BizangaStore, developer of massively scalable object storage software for email and cloud storage applications, announced its transformation into Scality as the new company and brand name.

Scality further announced the completion of the initial capitalization of the company in a US $5M funding round led by institutional investors Credit Agricole Private Equity and Galileo that included business angels, Scality management and employees.

Scality was founded with the goal of solving the problem of exponential storage demand for the world’s largest email and Internet service providers. Scality’s RING technology for Email is massively scalable object-storage software designed specifically for email storage at service providers and large enterprises.

In the funding round, management and employees invested US $1.3M, with 85% of employees electing to invest.

Institutional investors are:

• Credit Agricole Private Equity is one of the leading players in the French VC market. With € 430 M under management, its team is dedicated to support the development of young high potential companies in the technology and life Sciences sector. Partner Renaud Poulard will be taking a seat on the Scality board.
• Galileo, one of the first and most experienced VC funds in France will be represented by partner François Duliege. François, who served as VP Worldwide for the PC division at Computervision, based in San Diego, later founded and led to success Net4Music; Francois brings operational experience. He also holds seats on the Boards of Virtuoz and Talend; both of these companies operate in France and Silicon Valley.

Legal Advisers for Scality were Azam Darley & Associates, while Chammas & Marcheteau represented the institutional investors.

The company intends to use the funding to further accelerate its growth and to expand its US operations based in San Francisco. CA.

"Together with Credit Agricole Private Equity and Galileo we achieved superb returns in our prior company Bizanga and we look forward to success on a much larger scale with Scality," said Scality CEO Jerome Lecat. "We anticipate raising a series B round in about 18 months to continue our global expansion," he added.

This marks the completion of the spin-out process following the acquisition of Bizanga by Cloudmark in Feb. 2010. BizangaStore was created as an interim company name for the spin-out venture until a suitable company and brand name was found.

The search for the new name was a team-driven process, involving staff members and personal investors in the company. "A panel made up of customers, partners and investors settled on Scality in the final round as it reflects the guiding principle in the design of the product," said Serge Dugas, Scality’s Chief Sales and Marketing Officer and Co-Founder. "We expect that it will become synonymous with extremely scalable, sustainable and high performance software storage solutions."

CEO Jerome Lecat added:" This name became an obvious choice as it embodies the very DNA of the company. My former boss John Sidgmore – who led UUNET from US$30 M to US $3Bn revenue in 5 years – used to say at every opportunity: ‘If a technology cannot support 20x our needs today, do not deploy it.’ He was my mentor and his saying is our mantra, our idea of scaling: 20x the largest deployment on earth. Today, that translates to supporting at a minimum one Exabyte of storage. This is the technology we have designed and are implementing."