Intransa Scores $25M

With $25 million in new funding, IP SAN startup Intransa Inc. will chase OEM deals and grab at a lower-end market with a new system.

Intransa today announced its fourth round of funding, bringing its total to $74 million since 2000. Menlo Ventures led the round with participation from prior investors Advanced Technology Ventures (ATV), Sofinnova Ventures Inc., and U.S. Ventures. Menlo Partners managing partner Sonja Hoel joins the Intransa board.

Intransas round trumped the $20 million third round fellow iSCSI startup EqualLogic Inc. closed in June, and is the biggest round for a storage company since intelligent switch startup iVivity grabbed $26 million in May 2004 (see EqualLogic Scores $20M and IVivity Ingests $26M).

Is it worth so much? CEO Avi Katz says Intransa has hit its revenue target for all four quarters since it started shipping product in July of 2003. He wouldn’t say what the target was for the most recent quarter, but CTO Peter Wang told Byte and Switch in an interview in May that the startup’s goal was for $2 million in the quarter (see Peter Wang, Founder, VP & CTO, Intransa). Katz says he is looking for at least 60 percent growth each quarter to hit profitability by the end of 2005.

In an attempt to accelerate growth, Intransa is launching its second product, the IP3000, to go with its IP5000, which is aimed at the upper portion of the midrange market. Intransa targets the new system for SMBs, and Katz plans to cover the high end eventually. “We’ll continue to expand our product portfolio,” he says. “We’re going into the SMB market now, then we’ll expand upward.”