$8 Million in Funding for Start-Up Nasuni

Founded in 2009 and based in Natick, MA, Nasuni Corp., a start-up company preparing to offer a gateway to cloud storage, has secured $8 million in Series A funding from North Bridge Venture Partners and Sigma Partners.

Nasuni, founded to democratize cloud storage and make it feasible for
more businesses, is led by technology veterans with a long track record
in data access, storage, and protection.Founders Andres Rodriguez and Robert Mason pioneered a cloud storage architecture at Archivas, which Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) acquired in 2007 for $120 million. The technology is currently at the heart of the HDS cloud initiative.

Rodriguez, serving as CEO of Nasuni, is a ‘serial entrepreneur’ with several successful companies behind him. He brings sales and marketing experience to Nasuni and will oversee the company’s strategic partnerships and market development efforts. He founded Archivas and after its acquisition became CTO of file services at HDS, where he supported the worldwide rollout of the Hitachi Content Archive Platform (HCAP). Before founding Archivas, Rodriguez was CTO at the New York Times, where he was responsible for the digital strategy and worked extensively on digital content preservation.

Mason has more than 20 years of operational, financial and team management experience for storage technology companies. He was VP of engineering at Archivas where he oversaw all development and quality assurance. After the Hitachi acquisition, Rob managed the integration of his team with Hitachi’s, and supported the rollout of HCAP. Rob came to Archivas from storage giant EMC, where he was a senior manager responsible for the API, support applications, and partner development for EMC’s content-addressed storage product, Centera. His extensive experience also includes founding I/O Integrity, a storage-based startup developing a high-performance caching appliance. Rob holds upwards of 25 patents and has an MBA from Rutgers

According to Steve Duplessie, Founder & Sr. Analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc., “The commercial public cloud simply is not going to happen in a big way until the user has solid, secure control over their data.  Nasuni has understood this from day one, and engineered its offerings to address this exact issue. The fact that they were able to do it so fast is a testament to focused execution by a focused team.  This is one play everyone should keep their eye on.”  

“The economic climate for startup ventures has changed radically over the last several years. A new company must bring something new and exciting to the table to be considered a good candidate for investment. If the company has a strong executive team, so much the better,” said Jeffrey McCarthy, partner at North Bridge. “We are privileged to continue our long-term relationship with the Nasuni founders, having witnessed their technology advancements and seen their commitment and ensuing success firsthand.”

“Nasuni’s vision tracks with what we see as critical for the next generation of cloud computing and storage technologies,” said Paul Flanagan, managing director at Sigma Partners. “We have invested in some of the most innovative and significant technology companies of our time, and we see Nasuni as similarly positioned to turn an extremely innovative technology into a successful business.”

“Our goal is delivering unlimited protected storage at an exceptional value, and for this we have brought together a stellar engineering team and advisors who have tackled the challenge and come up with an exceptional offering,” said Rodriguez. “We will be providing enterprise-class features, while removing the existing obstacles to cloud storage adoption for companies of all sizes, with or without IT resources. We believe our offering will propel cloud storage into a segment of the market that is prime for the cloud, but not currently being served.”

McCarthy and Flanagan both serve on Nasuni’s board of directors, along with former Iron Mountain Digital president John Clancy. Nasuni will be unveiling its first products in spring 2010.