What are you looking for ?
Infinidat
Articles_top

Nexenta Raises $20 Million

Total was $142 million since inception in 2005.

Nexenta Systems, Inc. is raising $20 million to accelerate its market growth and solidify its innovation and leadership.

SoftBank Group Corp. is leading the financing round along with a strategic distribution and go-to-market agreement.

The round also attracts strategic and financial investors, including Javelin Venture Partners, SV Booth Investments, SAB Capital, Lake Trail Capital LP, TRB Equity, and Tarkan Maner, CEO at Nexenta.

Nexenta is continuing its massive market disruption where legacy hardware storage companies had dominated the industry for the past 30+ years. We are delighted with our solid market growth via our tight customer and partner relations, deep IP innovation and unmatched operational excellence. We believe with this strategic financing round supported by SoftBank and some of the leading global strategic and financial investors, Nexenta will extend its market and innovation leadership into new geographic, vertical and differentiated IP markets from IoT to AI and robotics and big data supporting any type of computing from the edge to core and cloud data center computing – on any type of hardware or compute platform, via any protocol, for any app on any hybrid or multi-cloud deployment,” said: Tarkan Maner, CEO, Nexenta.

SoftBank and Nexenta entered a strategic agreement that involves commercial dimensions around SoftBank’s distribution and usage of Nexenta portfolio, and collaborative integrated OpenSDS systems development with SoftBank and its hardware partners.

SoftBank is focused on partnering with market-leading technology companies around the world. Nexenta is an innovator and disruptor with its deep IP portfolio, strong OEM relationships, and proven management team. We are excited to partner with Nexenta and realize the advantage of software defined storage at SoftBank and our eco-system partners,” said Ken Miyauchi, president and CEO, SoftBank.

SoftBank and Nexenta announced the details of the strategic investment and commercial agreement in Tokyo, Japan on Tuesday, November 28, at SoftBank HQs with a signing ceremony with an audience of joint customers, partners and press.

Comments

Nexenta is a mystery besides of all its leadership effort to drive the success of the open source storage wave during several years that finally got catched up by the competition.

A few years ago the company had some difficulties as it got less visibility on the market even if new product iterations got released with interesting features.

Two examples to illustrate this, visible from everyone but often forgotten by vendors.

First, it's related to event participation or organization. The Nexenta OpenSDx Summit 2017 has not been organized and reduced its impact year after year illustrating the limited interest from the market for the company. Participation to expo and conferences is also a key indicator of the financial situation and at least people question themselves when companies stop to appear at shows with thousands of attendees. Nexenta was not present at recent shows such AWS re:Invent, HPE Discover, SC17, OpenStack Summit, Oracle OpenWorld, Veritas Vision, NetApp Insight, VMworld, Cloud Expo Europe or Big Data World to list important ones.

Second, on the press side, before this last announcement about the SoftBank investment, the web site shows former press release in May 2017 meaning that there was no news for six months. Playing in a dynamic market like storage with lots of innovation and market pressure requires more frequent news as it invites here readers, users and prospects to be alerted about the potential company situation. About that last announcement, it's always strange to read an about section almost as long as the content of the press release. Does Nexenta has really something to say?

This $20 million injection led by SoftBank Corp. could be assimilated as an H round for a total raised of $141.5 million. This amount is relatively high especially for an open source company and having so many rounds shows the difficulty to sustain the business and be independent without any external financial help. Does it show again a lower asymptote for open source solutions? At least, it indicates a new dilution, a reduction of the potential exit multiple and doubt on the profitability of the company. Even Tarkan Maner, CEO, has invested in this round, wishing probably to not be too much diluted. Did he receive some guarantees about a potential exit?

The press release lists two cities, on top Tokyo, Japan, and Santa Clara, CA, and the event took place in Tokyo recently at the SoftBank HQ like a wedding right or at least an engagement?

It's surprising to read that SoftBank is focused on partnering with market-leading technology companies, but Nexenta is not in that situation, let's say is no longer in this situation but more in a follower position. The press release is not posted on SoftBank web site and if we search Nexenta on the portal we get nothing.

Let's try to be positive and put the agreement in a win/win perspective:

- It seems to be positive for Nexenta as it gives new direction and hope especially in Japan but did the company have any other alternatives?
- It also signed for a strategic distribution and a go-to-market agreement meaning that SoftBank will support, even more will do and drive the business in Japan.
- It gains users with SoftBank and preferred hardware partners.
- SoftBank injects a small amount of money in Nexenta and gains important rights in Japan.
- SoftBank will be able to use Nexenta's portfolio and SoftBank promote Nexenta to its preferred hardware partners to validate its investment.
- Good deal for both parties finally, technology for SoftBank and money for Nexenta.

We'll continue to follow closely Nexenta as NexentaEdge is one of the most comprehensive multi-protocol SDS but it's an indicator for sure. How things are going is a bit chaotic but Nexenta is still alive. We let you imagine the next steps in the Nexenta quest of survival for a few years now…

Articles_bottom
AIC
ATTO
OPEN-E