$15 Million for Panzura in Series C …

Panzura, Inc., provider of global cloud storage solutions, has closed a $15 million Series C funding round led by Opus Capital with participation from its existing investors, Matrix Partners, Khosla Ventures and Chevron Technology Ventures, the investment arm of the world’s third-largest oil conglomerate.

Opus Capital General Partner Carl Showalter will join Panzura’s board of directors.

The new round of funding brings the company’s total backing to $33 million.

With plans to expand its domestic and international footprint in 2012, Panzura will apply the new capital toward establishing an international sales presence, while simultaneously scaling its US-based marketing, sales and engineering operations. The company also plans to expand its channel ecosystem and explore joint development projects with strategic partners, while continuing to place a concerted emphasis on internal research and product development.

"The rapid growth of unstructured data and the desire to make content available to a globally distributed workforce pose a significant challenge for the modern enterprise," said Carl Showalter, general partner at Opus Capital. "Panzura’s solution elegantly solves these challenges. We are excited to work with an amazing team and look forward to supporting them in their ongoing mission to put the power and extensibility of the cloud within reach of the modern enterprise."

Panzura recently announced sweeping updates to its product, the Panzura Global Cloud Storage System that included the third generation release of its Panzura operating system (PZOS3) and an enhanced version of its Quicksilver Cloud Storage Controller. It offers a cloud-integrated storage system capable of delivering enterprise solutions, with true NAS functionality, native cloud support, a globally distributed file system, built-in enterprise security and data protection, as well as high speed data transfer rates to and from the cloud, all in a single data storage solution with unlimited scalability. The PZOS3 solution was recently recognized as a Best of Interop award winner in the Data Center and Storage category at the 2012 Interop Conference.

CEO Randy Chou and CTO John Taylor cofounded the company in July 2008 with a team of expert engineers. Prior to Panzura, they developed the core security and performance technology at wireless networking leader Aruba Networks and the application delivery technology in Alteon WebSystem’s Layer 4-7 switching products.

"Panzura is honored to add the expertise of our new partners at Opus Capital, with the addition of industry veteran Carl Showalter to our board, and are encouraged by the ongoing support of our longtime partners at Matrix Ventures, Khosla Ventures and Chevron Technology Ventures," said Randy Chou, CEO and co-founder of Panzura. "Panzura provides a viable cloud-based solution for the enterprise that directly enables high-value business objectives – such as improved cost, scale, availability and global access – while fitting seamlessly into existing IT infrastructures. With the support of this Series C round, Panzura looks forward to the further innovation and development of global cloud-integrated storage solutions."