Copan Secured $18.5 million in Additional Capital Financing

COPAN Systems has secured $18.5 million in new capital financing. The round was led by new investor Westbury Partners and includes participation from existing COPAN Systems investors Austin Ventures, Globespan Capital Partners, Firstmark Capital and Credit Suisse. The funding will help expand the company’s product development, sales, marketing and channel efforts globally and build on its success in the enterprise data storage market.

"Today’s enterprise data centers are storing massive amounts of persistent data and the requirements of growth far exceed the storage budgets currently earmarked," said Jim Schubauer, president of Westbury Partners. "COPAN has proven to the Enterprise consumer that its 300 series systems for data protection and archiving deliver 3X- 10X the useable storage capacity at the same cost of traditional transactional storage systems at 1/10th the operating cost. The substantial ROI benefits include higher reliability, higher data integrity, reduced power and cooling requirements, and a significantly smaller data center footprint. COPAN’s existing investor base, in support of Mark Ward, CEO, and his team, represent the type of successful foundation that Westbury seeks to build upon."

Forty percent of power consumption in the data center today is for storage according to InfoPro, a leading research analyst firm. COPAN Systems specializes in storing fixed, long-term, infrequently-accessed data, also known as ‘persistent data,’ which represents more than 75 percent of all data currently under management. COPAN’s Enterprise MAID technology platform is purpose-built for the cost-effective and energy-efficient storage of persistent data and delivers significant benefits including cost savings of 90 percent of energy per unit of storage. Compared to data stored on traditional disk array solutions, COPAN users can gain an estimated four-year power and cooling savings of $9.5 and $13 million.

COPAN has seen massive market adoption in healthcare, media & entertainment, technology, education, financial services and government. Federal government agencies currently account for approximately one-third of the company’s revenue. The Fed has set a goal of 30% reduction in energy consumption by the year 2015. eGovernment initiatives are increasing the amount of persistent data that needs to be stored and archived, positioning COPAN for even stronger growth in this segment.

"Increasing energy efficiency and reducing data center footprint are fundamental goals in the technology decisions of every company and government agency," said Mark Ward, president and CEO of COPAN Systems. "We’ve enabled our customers to dramatically increase the amount of digital assets stored online at a fraction of the cost of traditional disk storage vendor solutions. COPAN owns the industry leadership position in the fastest growing portion of the storage market."