Storability Lands $30M Second Round

Storability Inc., a provider of automated storage management services, has won a major vote of confidence from the VC community, securing $30 million in a second round of funding (see Storability Secures $30M ).

Led by Technology Partners Venture Capitaland Sprout Group, the round also includes an investment from Lee Munder Capital Group and additional funding from Storability's initial investors Battery Ventures, Madison Dearborn Partners, and Lightspeed Venture Partners. [Disclosure: Lightspeed is an investor in Light Reading -- see Editorial Policy].

The Southborough, Mass., firm plans to use the funding to speed deployment of its AssurENT service, an automated enterprise storage management system that provides storage operation and management services on the customer premises. And this is where Storabilitys strategy stands out from most of its competitors in the SSP market (see StorageWay Snags $42M)

It does not provide bulk outsourcing services as such, but instead offers to manage whatever storage the customer already has, on the customer premises, for a monthly fee. The model is reminiscent of Web-based network management services.

AssurENT gives customers detailed current and historical views of status, storage capacity planning, storage utilization, performance, and other critical criteria regardless of the underlying hardware and management software they already use. It can be accessed from a single Web-based portal, giving customers better control over their storage environments and enabling them to purchase additional storage, company officials say.Storability disparages the more common SSP model, which it says is simply about driving down the price of raw storage space. “Our research suggests that prospective customers are less concerned with the high price of 'raw storage' than they are looking for affordable and reliable ways to manage their data and storage,” says Kirby Wadsworth, Storability co-founder and VP of marketing.

“In today's economy, VCs are increasingly cautious in their investments. Raising such a large venture-backed funding round is a strong endorsement for Storability's vision and business model," says John McArthur, VP of storage research, IDC. “With this financial backing, Storability will be a company to watch closely in the storage management services space.”

Storability’s technology partners (whose products are supported by AssurENT ) include Akamai Technologies Inc. (Nasdaq: AKAM), Brocade Communications Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: BRCD), Compaq Computer Corp. (NYSE: CPQ), EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC), McData Corp. (Nasdaq: MCDT), StorageTek (NYSE: STK), Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW), and Veritas Software Corp. (Nasdaq: VRTS), with more to come.

— Jo Maitland, Senior Editor, Byte and Switch http://www.byteandswitch.com