Violin Memory Raised $50 Million

Violin Memory, Inc. announced $50 million in Series D funding, putting the company at a market value of more than $800 million just three years after CEO Don Basile joined.

Investors include long time partners Toshiba and Juniper Networks in addition to new investors SAP Ventures and Highland Capital Partners, among others.

"At the intersection of big data, virtualization and business critical applications, Violin’s flash based primary storage puts us in a unique position to capitalize on the hyper-growth of flash in the enterprise data center," said Don Basile, CEO of Violin Memory. "This is a multi-billion dollar market opportunity and the latest funding enables us to accelerate our aggressive go-to-market strategy and enhance our data management software portfolio to bring the benefits of Violin’s technology to customers worldwide."

These investments from several of the largest public companies in the computer industry (both announced and unannounced) validate the shift from disk to flash for primary enterprise storage. Driven by trends like big data, analytics, mobile 4G, social commerce and virtualization, Fortune 500 companies are adopting Violin’s flash technology to speed up mission-critical applications for performance and real-time business insights.
 
"IT leaders in the enterprise are embracing the in-memory database movement and the ‘speed-of-thought’ business benefits it brings," said Gaurav Tewari, director, SAP Ventures, who will be joining Violin’s Board as an Observer.

"By supporting Violin Memory and its disruptive flash technology, we can help to accelerate this trend, remove today’s memory limitations and open the field to all applications," added Nino Marakovic, Managing Director, SAP Ventures.
 
According to Scott Nelson, VP, Memory Business Unit at Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc., "We are pleased to continue this relationship with Violin to address the needs of customers who are targeting the fast-growing cloud computing and data center markets. Toshiba’s leading-edge NAND technology is an integral component in Violin’s high-performance flash Memory Arrays."