OpenStack Venture Funding Marches On as SwiftStack Secures $16M

If you observe the old adage "follow the money" right now, it seems that you'll be led straight to OpenStack. Today, there is yet more news about venture funding for an OpenStack-focused startup. SwiftStack, which specializes in software-defined storage based on the OpenStack cloud platform, announced that it closed $16 million in funding to scale its efforts to enable storage scalability for the enterprise.

The Series B round was led by OpenView Venture Partners as well as existing investors Mayfield Fund, Storm Ventures and UMC Capital. SwiftStack has now raised a total of $23.6 million.

The news from SwiftStack, of course, comes on the heels of Mirantis' announcement that it has nailed down a massive $100 million Series B funding round led by Insight Venture Partners. The financing is being billed as the largest Series B open source investment in history. Mirantis specializes in OpenStack services, training and support.

According to SwiftStack's announcement:

"As enterprises brace themselves for the exponential explosion of unstructured data volumes, they are demanding the flexibility and cost advantages that come from open source software and commodity hardware. The object storage market has grown considerably over the last couple years and is forecasted, according to Gartner, to grow at a CAGR of 20% from 2012 through 2016, reaching $456 million by 2016. SwiftStack's software-defined object storage platform, built on the OpenStack Swift object storage engine, and proven track record is positioned to take it on."

"There's been a sea change in the adoption of enterprise storage solutions, and object storage is a front-seat technology poised to be general purpose storage likely to supplant today's use of expensive SAN and NAS devices," said Joe Arnold, CEO of SwiftStack, in a statement. "Our disruptive technology and engagement model will leapfrog traditional enterprise storage software vendors in the race to deliver the storage scalability customers want, the way they want to buy it. With this new infusion of resources we'll be able to significantly scale on our vision to give customers an affordable, scalable, manageable and simple storage solution."

SwiftStack's  technology is used by a number of global companies, including eBay, HP, Time Warner Cable and Pac-12 Networks.