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Hewlett Packard Enterprise Invests in Scality

And enhanced partnership

Scality, Inc. announced an enhanced partnership between Scality and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) designed to accelerate the adoption of software-defined object and file storage with enterprises and service providers who are struggling to overcome the problems of storage at massive scale.

The enhanced partnership includes a commitment to integrate engineering strategies and deepen go-to-market collaboration with new sales resources, marketing investment, and other business development programs. This builds on the October 2014 announcement where Hewlett Packard began packaging Scality RING software with its Apollo 4000 and ProLiant servers. As part of this announcement, Hewlett Packard Ventures completed a strategic equity investment in Scality, as an addition to Series D.

The enterprise storage market is diverging into latency-optimized and capacity-driven segments. As the leader in enterprise and hyperscale servers, and the fastest growing vendor in all-flash storage with HPE 3PAR StoreServ, this Scality partnership gives us a leadership position in capacity-driven storage as well,” said Manish Goel, senior VP and GM for storage, HPE. “The combination of the Scality RING software, ultra-dense HPE Apollo 4510 and HPE Apollo 4200, along with advisory and support services, provides the best object solution in the market with the flexibility, resiliency, and performance required to drive down the cost of storage at petabyte-scale.”

The explosion of sensor data, mobile devices, and cloud-native applications continues to drive rapid growth of unstructured and semi-structured data, shining a spotlight on scalability and performance gaps in legacy NAS solutions. As enterprises and service providers explore ways to tap into the IoT, storage solutions are required which are capable of bridging the gap between traditional file-based applications and new object-access paradigms. These shifts also require a new style of compute infrastructure with traditional rack solutions giving way to ultra-dense compute notes capable of storing more data in less physical space. The Scality RING architecture paired with the hyperscale HPE Apollo 4510 and HPE Apollo 4200 provides a future-proof solution for petabyte-scale object applications. At over 5PB in a single rack and 224TB in 2U, the HPE Apollo 4000 series is the industry
leader in capacity-optimized computing.

Through its global capabilities and expansive partner network, HPE enables flexible financing options, robust lifecycle management and advisory services, and world-class support to reduce customer risk as they transition to new technologies.

This strategic investment from HPE helps complete a busy year for Scality. Earlier this year, the company announced availability of version 5.0 of the RING. In June the company introduced the industry’s first software-based storage trial, with a free, online trial of the Scality RING. The company announced the completion of their Series D in August, and since then has revealed an increasing lineup of new customer wins and new partnerships with resellers. In October, the company opened a new R&D center in Paris and claimed the national title of Start-Up of the Year 2015 for France, during EY’s Entrepreneur Of The Year 2015.

Understanding how to handle data growth is no longer a worry specific to storage administrators, or even CIOs, but should be top-of-mind for every C-Level executive. Emerging application requirements are driving storage and compute closer together, forcing legacy stand-alone storage providers and those without a server footprint to re-examine their strategies,” said Jérôme Lecat, CEO, Scality. “HPE has chosen to invest in Scality, the market-leader in software-defined object storage, for those exact reasons. Our stronger relationship with HPE will allow us to continue to improve the RING, to better package it with the industry leading HPE Apollo 4510 and HPE Apollo 4200, and create a one-stop solution for the enterprise.”

Comments

Scality was already an OEM of Hewlett-Packard since October 2014 to combine its RING storage software with HP ProLiant servers to businesses around the world.

The deal was only with the server not the storage division of HP. Now it has been extended to both of them into the new HPE.

Scality also entered into a new relationship with Dell last August and the press release here does not confirm if this agreement continues. Now that HP is an investor, it will be difficult for the French-born company to sign other competing storage giants and also to be acquired by somebody else than HPE.

This later just invested into Scality for an amount the start-up refuse to reveal, but it is probably $12 million. Why?

Scality CEO Jérôme Lecat told us that the total invested into Scality since its inception in 2010 is now $92 million. It was $80 million before this press release.

Lecat added that two-thirds of the money put in his start-up by investors came from France (see list of investors below.)

Scality is not profitable and it's not surprising for a start-up relatively young and obliged to invest a lot to grow rapidly.

When Scality completed a $45 million series D funding round last August, Lecat stated:" This new capital investment will allow us to massively boost our go-to-market, attract strategic new hires, continue to expand globally, and be primed for a successful IPO by 2017." But it will take some time to organize this IPO. "We have to restructure the company, especially for accounting," he said. "We have not sufficient maturity."

Financial rounds of Scality in $ million:

Round Year Amount
series A 2010 5
series B 2011 7
series C 2013 22
series D 2015 45
addition to series D from HPE 2016 12
Total   92

Investors:
Menlo Ventures (US VC)
Iris Capital (pan-European VC)
Idinvest Partners (pan-European VC)
Omnes Capital (fka Crédit Agricole Private Equity)
BPI (FSN PME, the Digital Ambition Fund, investment fund dedicated to innovative SMEs in the digital field, initiated by French State)
Galileo Partners (French VC)
BroadBand Tower (in Japanese specialty Internet Data Center business)
HPE (US IT manufacturer)

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