Intransa, Inc., announced the completion of new funding, raising a total of $15 million since the beginning of 2008.

Rho Ventures led the most recent round. “Intransa has demonstrated leadership in bringing the benefits of IP storage to video surveillance,” said Paul Bartlett, partner at Rho Ventures and the newest member of the Intransa Board of Directors. “We are very excited by the opportunity to participate in the proven leader of scalable IP video storage for physical security and the company's many potential growth applications.”

Video surveillance systems have experienced rapid growth over the past several years as the need for increased retention of video with better resolution and increased frame rate have impacted the physical security, gaming, hospitality, education, transportation, public safety, government, corrections, homeland security, energy, manufacturing and retail sectors. Traditional analog surveillance systems coupled with direct-attached captive storage in DVRs have proven too expensive and problematic to keep up with the demand.

Earlier this year, UK-based IMS Research forecast that 3.3 exabytes of storage will be required by 2012 for video from new deployments alone. And, in October 2008 New York-based ABI Research predicted that overall video surveillance spending will grow to $2 billion in the transportation sector, while retail surveillance will reach $4 billion. Able to offer the benefits of shared IP storage for a fraction of the price of direct attached captive DVR storage, Intransa stands to benefit greatly from those trends.

Intransa customers benefit with new IP-based storage solutions that can deliver a few days worth of retention for edge recording or for a single location such as a retail store or bank branch. Yet the solution can scale to support months or years of instantly-available video for a fraction of the price of captive DVR storage.

In a time of economic uncertainty and budget challenges, Intransa solutions offer the unique ability to leverage existing analog CCTV infrastructure, reducing costs while increasing the reliability, video quality and capacity of one or more existing DVRs with all the benefits of IP. Nearly 100 applications and products submitted by physical security, medical imaging and IT vendors have been certified by the Intransa StorAlliance Technology Labs for risk-free IP storage integration.

Rho Ventures joins other Intransa investors Entrepia Ventures, Guggenheim Venture Partners, Menlo Ventures and US Venture Partners. The new funding is intended to accelerate sales, marketing and research and development efforts.

“I am extremely happy to have Paul and Rho Ventures join Intransa at this critical time,” commented Bud Broomhead, CEO of Intransa. “While the economy is uncertain, the need to upgrade existing CCTV infrastructure affordably and risk-free will be more important than ever. Only Intransa has proven that it can meet the challenges of reducing surveillance system cost while extending DVR life and capabilities.”