DATADIRECT NETWORKS CLOSES SERIES A FUNDING ROUND OF US Dollars 9.9 MILLION.
PR Newswire, London, October 1. This press release is transmitted
on behalf of DataDirect Networks
Profitable storage networking appliance company poised for aggressive expansion
Los Angeles -- DataDirect Networks, the leading provider of the world's highest performance storage networking appliances, has completed a US Dollars 9.9 million Series A round with ClearLight Partners LLC, a dlrs 300 million private equity and venture capital fund, Digital Coast Ventures, the venture capital investment vehicle of Digital Coast Partners, and PART'COM, one of the premier European venture capital firms specializing in the sectors of telecommunications, media and Internet.
DataDirect Networks is profitable and has been self-funded during its first 13 years of business. The company has offices and a manufacturing facility in Chatsworth, Calif., advanced research and development facilities in Baltimore, MD, and sales operations in Atlanta, Chicago, San Francisco, and Santa Fe, internationally in the United Kingdom and Beijing. The company has also announced a centralized European sales and support location in Paris. With a rapidly growing revenue stream from its technologically superior Silicon Storage Appliance, the company decided to take in additional equity capital for further expansion of the sales team, marketing initiatives and customer service support.
"The participation of ClearLight Partners, Digital Coast Ventures and PART'COM is a very positive validation of the company's leading edge technology and vision for accelerating data and applications simply and easily," Alex Bouzari, chief executive officer, DataDirect Networks, Inc., said. "This funding provides the company the opportunity to continue our rapid growth on a global basis while building a world-class customer service organization."
"We liked DataDirect Networks as a company because it was quite unique in today's marketplace with a long history of success, a new technologically disruptive storage networking appliance product and operating profitability. However, we made our decision to invest in DataDirect because its customers were blown-away with the performance, reliability, and simplicity of the Silicon Storage Appliance -- SAN DataDirector product," Rob Healy, Partner, ClearLight Partners, LLC, said. "DataDirect Networks has the SAN DataDirector product in the hands of extremely high-end customers in diverse group of industries. This diverse set of successful customer experiences provides a unique leadership opportunity in the rapidly developing storage networking appliance market."
DataDirect Networks' Technology Advantage
DataDirect Networks' technology allows business to accelerate their applications, providing data three times faster than existing Storage Area Networking (SAN) and ten times faster than Network Attached Storage (NAS) technology. The acceleration of data to applications and users -- simply and easily -- allows DataDirect Networks customers to consolidate their storage and dramatically lower their Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). The Silicon Storage Appliance technology allows management of up to 100 Terabytes by a single system administrator, reducing TCO by a factor of 10.
DataDirect Networks is the recognized leader in storage networking appliance technology with over 500TB of virtualised storage in use around the world. Based on feedback gained from CTOs, CIOs and CEOs, DataDirect Networks created Silicon Storage Appliance technology that accelerates application performance, simplifies information management, and establishes an intelligent platform for deploying application-specific storage software.
DataDirect Networks' Silicon Storage Appliance -- SAN DataDirector product line is targeted at medium and large corporations for departmental, enterprise data centre and carrier-class applications. DataDirect first released its data centre platform in June 2000 and has subsequently sold systems to a wide range of clients including: Star TV, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, Loudeye, NASA, National Centre for Atmospheric Research, National Century Financial Enterprises, NOAA Forecast Systems Lab, and Sonic Foundry.
DataDirect Networks is leveraging the Silicon Storage Appliance platform to create a family of purpose-built appliances, each of which is tailored to address specific needs within the storage market such as virtualisation, transaction acceleration, rich media management, serverless backup, storage resource management and caching.
DataDirect Networks Corporate History
Founded in 1988 as MegaDrive Systems, the company initially focused on delivering high performance, fault tolerant storage for government and digital media markets of film, video and pre-press. As an early proponent of storage area network technology (having installed some of the first SANs for pre-press, broadcast, high performance computing and energy applications) and seeking to expand research and development activities, MegaDrive choose to merge with ImpactData in early 1998 to gain an additional engineering team focused on storage management. The company, renamed as DataDirect Networks, then set on an ambitious course to develop a simpler, easier way to create scalable storage area networks using a single plug-and-play device. The resulting Silicon Storage Appliance technology was introduced to customers in June 2000. The company is currently profitable.
About the Investors
ClearLight Partners is a dlrs 300 million private equity and venture capital fund based in Newport Beach, California. Focused primarily on growth capital and leveraged acquisitions, the fund targets both emerging growth and middle market companies in selected industries that offer the potential for substantial capital appreciation. The fund also selectively pursues venture capital investments in later stage companies.
Digital Coast Ventures is a venture capital investment vehicle of Digital Coast Partners, a boutique investment banking firm specializing in Internet services, broadband communications, electronic commerce and software. Digital Coast Partners and its affiliated offices are located in Los Angeles, Tampa, New York, Philadelphia, Denver, London, Munich, Prague, Hong Kong, Mumbai and Kuala Lumpur. Digital Coast Partners is a member of the National Association of Securities Dealers, Inc. and its professional associates are registered with the NASD Member SIPC.
PART'COM is one of the premier European venture capital firms specializing in the sectors of telecommunications, media and Internet, managing or advising directly or through various funds (In-Com, COM 2 I and MediaTel), with more than EUR 520 million under management.
About DataDirect Networks, Inc.
DataDirect Networks is the leader in the rapidly growing market for intelligent storage networking appliances. DataDirect Networks' Silicon Storage Appliances make it easy, simple and trouble-free to accelerate and manage applications, dramatically reducing TCO. For more information, contact DataDirect Networks at (818) 700-7600 or visit www.datadirectnet.com.
Profitable storage networking appliance company poised for aggressive expansion
Los Angeles -- DataDirect Networks, the leading provider of the world's highest performance storage networking appliances, has completed a US Dollars 9.9 million Series A round with ClearLight Partners LLC, a dlrs 300 million private equity and venture capital fund, Digital Coast Ventures, the venture capital investment vehicle of Digital Coast Partners, and PART'COM, one of the premier European venture capital firms specializing in the sectors of telecommunications, media and Internet.
DataDirect Networks is profitable and has been self-funded during its first 13 years of business. The company has offices and a manufacturing facility in Chatsworth, Calif., advanced research and development facilities in Baltimore, MD, and sales operations in Atlanta, Chicago, San Francisco, and Santa Fe, internationally in the United Kingdom and Beijing. The company has also announced a centralized European sales and support location in Paris. With a rapidly growing revenue stream from its technologically superior Silicon Storage Appliance, the company decided to take in additional equity capital for further expansion of the sales team, marketing initiatives and customer service support.
"The participation of ClearLight Partners, Digital Coast Ventures and PART'COM is a very positive validation of the company's leading edge technology and vision for accelerating data and applications simply and easily," Alex Bouzari, chief executive officer, DataDirect Networks, Inc., said. "This funding provides the company the opportunity to continue our rapid growth on a global basis while building a world-class customer service organization."
"We liked DataDirect Networks as a company because it was quite unique in today's marketplace with a long history of success, a new technologically disruptive storage networking appliance product and operating profitability. However, we made our decision to invest in DataDirect because its customers were blown-away with the performance, reliability, and simplicity of the Silicon Storage Appliance -- SAN DataDirector product," Rob Healy, Partner, ClearLight Partners, LLC, said. "DataDirect Networks has the SAN DataDirector product in the hands of extremely high-end customers in diverse group of industries. This diverse set of successful customer experiences provides a unique leadership opportunity in the rapidly developing storage networking appliance market."
DataDirect Networks' Technology Advantage
DataDirect Networks' technology allows business to accelerate their applications, providing data three times faster than existing Storage Area Networking (SAN) and ten times faster than Network Attached Storage (NAS) technology. The acceleration of data to applications and users -- simply and easily -- allows DataDirect Networks customers to consolidate their storage and dramatically lower their Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). The Silicon Storage Appliance technology allows management of up to 100 Terabytes by a single system administrator, reducing TCO by a factor of 10.
DataDirect Networks is the recognized leader in storage networking appliance technology with over 500TB of virtualised storage in use around the world. Based on feedback gained from CTOs, CIOs and CEOs, DataDirect Networks created Silicon Storage Appliance technology that accelerates application performance, simplifies information management, and establishes an intelligent platform for deploying application-specific storage software.
DataDirect Networks' Silicon Storage Appliance -- SAN DataDirector product line is targeted at medium and large corporations for departmental, enterprise data centre and carrier-class applications. DataDirect first released its data centre platform in June 2000 and has subsequently sold systems to a wide range of clients including: Star TV, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, Loudeye, NASA, National Centre for Atmospheric Research, National Century Financial Enterprises, NOAA Forecast Systems Lab, and Sonic Foundry.
DataDirect Networks is leveraging the Silicon Storage Appliance platform to create a family of purpose-built appliances, each of which is tailored to address specific needs within the storage market such as virtualisation, transaction acceleration, rich media management, serverless backup, storage resource management and caching.
DataDirect Networks Corporate History
Founded in 1988 as MegaDrive Systems, the company initially focused on delivering high performance, fault tolerant storage for government and digital media markets of film, video and pre-press. As an early proponent of storage area network technology (having installed some of the first SANs for pre-press, broadcast, high performance computing and energy applications) and seeking to expand research and development activities, MegaDrive choose to merge with ImpactData in early 1998 to gain an additional engineering team focused on storage management. The company, renamed as DataDirect Networks, then set on an ambitious course to develop a simpler, easier way to create scalable storage area networks using a single plug-and-play device. The resulting Silicon Storage Appliance technology was introduced to customers in June 2000. The company is currently profitable.
About the Investors
ClearLight Partners is a dlrs 300 million private equity and venture capital fund based in Newport Beach, California. Focused primarily on growth capital and leveraged acquisitions, the fund targets both emerging growth and middle market companies in selected industries that offer the potential for substantial capital appreciation. The fund also selectively pursues venture capital investments in later stage companies.
Digital Coast Ventures is a venture capital investment vehicle of Digital Coast Partners, a boutique investment banking firm specializing in Internet services, broadband communications, electronic commerce and software. Digital Coast Partners and its affiliated offices are located in Los Angeles, Tampa, New York, Philadelphia, Denver, London, Munich, Prague, Hong Kong, Mumbai and Kuala Lumpur. Digital Coast Partners is a member of the National Association of Securities Dealers, Inc. and its professional associates are registered with the NASD Member SIPC.
PART'COM is one of the premier European venture capital firms specializing in the sectors of telecommunications, media and Internet, managing or advising directly or through various funds (In-Com, COM 2 I and MediaTel), with more than EUR 520 million under management.
About DataDirect Networks, Inc.
DataDirect Networks is the leader in the rapidly growing market for intelligent storage networking appliances. DataDirect Networks' Silicon Storage Appliances make it easy, simple and trouble-free to accelerate and manage applications, dramatically reducing TCO. For more information, contact DataDirect Networks at (818) 700-7600 or visit www.datadirectnet.com.
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| Publication: | PR Newswire |
|---|---|
| Geographic Code: | 1USA |
| Date: | Oct 1, 2001 |
| Words: | 985 |
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