Avere Systems

Last updated
Avere Systems, Inc
Company type Private
Founded2008
FounderRonald Bianchini, Jr.
Michael L. Kazar
Dan Nydick
Headquarters,
United States
Key people
Ronald Bianchini, Jr., CEO
Michael L. Kazar, (CTO)
Website www.averesystems.com

Avere Systems was a privately held technology company that produces computer data storage and data management infrastructure. The company was founded in 2008 [1] and is based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. [2] On January 3, 2018, the company announced that it was being acquired by Microsoft. [3] [4]

Contents

Avere's clients include the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Office of Infectious Diseases, the Library of Congress, Turner Broadcasting and Rising Sun Pictures. [5] [6] [1]

History

Avere Systems was founded in Pittsburgh in 2008 by Ronald Bianchini, Jr., Ph.D., Michael L. Kazar, Ph.D and Dan Nydick. In December 2008, Avere announced a $15 million (~$20.8 million in 2023) investment led by Menlo Ventures [7] and Norwest Venture Partners. [8] In August 2010, Avere raised $17 million (~$23.2 million in 2023), [9] led by Tenaya Capital [10] with participation of existing investors. In July 2012, Avere raised $20 million (~$26.2 million in 2023), [11] led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. [12] In 2014, the company announced an additional $20 million in venture financing, bringing the total to $72 million. The series D round was led by Western Digital Capital. [13] Kazar, the company's CTO, received a lifetime achievement award in 2013 for his contributions to data storage from the world's largest technology professional membership association. Avere Systems and its CEO, Ronald Bianchini Jr. won the Carnegie Science Award for Information Technology in 2014. [14] [15]

In 2014, the company announced an additional $20 million in venture financing, bringing the total to $72 million. The Series D round was led by Western Digital Capital. [16] [1] In 2015, Avere was named as Google's cloud platform technology partner of the year. [17]

In March 2017, Avere raised an additional $14 million (~$17.1 million in 2023) in a funding round that included previous investors and Google. [18] As of March 2017, the company had raised over $90 million in funding. [18]

On January 3, 2018, the company announced that it was being acquired by Microsoft. [3] Terms of the acquisition have not been disclosed. [4]

Operations

Avere Systems released its first FXT Series storage appliances in November 2009. The FXT series uses automated storage tiering to process data. The company launched a virtual version of its filer, called the Virtual FXT Edge filer (vFXT) to enable customers to use cloud compute without moving data from on-premises storage. [19] In 2016, Avere released the FXT 5000 series of edge filers, which doubled performance and capacity over previous models. [20] The 5200 model was released for users with lower performance workloads in April 2016. [21]

In September 2016, Avere released the C2N System, a hybrid NAS/object storage appliance. [22] [23]

Avere is a member of the Standards Performance Evaluation Corporation. [24] and has active technology partnerships with Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, HGST/Amplidata, IBM, and SwiftStack. [20] [25] The Library of Congress uses Avere in its storage network for access to images and other digital resources requested by site visitors. [6] In November 2014, Avere announced selection by the Centers for Disease Control's (CDC) Office of Infectious Diseases (OID) to power its genomic sequencing storage environment. [5] [26]

Avere's technology has been used by visual effects studios for rendering special effects as well as for cloud storage of data available to multiple users. The FXT Edge filers were designed to maximize storage performance to improve workload efficiency. All data is encrypted with AES-256 encryption and complies with federal security standard FIPS 140-2. [20] Visual effects studios such as DreamWorks, [27] Digital Domain, [28] Image Engine [29] and Framestore have been reported as using Avere technology. [30]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Western Digital</span> American digital storage company

Western Digital Corporation is an American computer drive manufacturer and data storage company, headquartered in San Jose, California. It designs, manufactures and sells data technology products, including data storage devices, data center systems and cloud storage services.

Quantum Corporation is a data storage, management, and protection company that provides technology to store, manage, archive, and protect video and unstructured data throughout the data life cycle. Their products are used by enterprises, media and entertainment companies, government agencies, big data companies, and life science organizations. Quantum is headquartered in San Jose, California and has offices around the world, supporting customers globally in addition to working with a network of distributors, VARs, DMRs, OEMs and other suppliers.

NetApp, Inc. is an American data infrastructure company that provides unified data storage, integrated data services, and cloud operations (CloudOps) solutions to enterprise customers. The company is based in San Jose, California. It has ranked in the Fortune 500 from 2012 to 2021. Founded in 1992 with an initial public offering in 1995, NetApp offers cloud data services for management of applications and data both online and physically.

Norwest Venture Partners (Norwest) is an American venture and growth equity investment firm. The firm targets early to late-stage venture and growth equity investments across several sectors, including cloud computing and information technology, Internet, SaaS, business and financial services, and healthcare. Headquartered in Menlo Park, California, Norwest has offices in San Francisco and subsidiaries in Mumbai, India and Tel Aviv, Israel. The firm has funded more than 700 companies since inception.

Nirvanix is an American-based provider of business phone systems, VoIP services, hosted PBX, SIP Trunks, and cloud storage services headquartered in San Diego, California, United States. The company offers a variety of business phone solutions for small, medium as well as enterprise businesses. It also has a strong presence in public, hybrid and private cloud storage services with usage-based pricing. Based on previous service companies founded in 1998, Nirvanix shut down in October 2013. In July 2021 Nirvanix re-entered the business with $12 million funding.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lifesize</span>

Lifesize is a video and audio telecommunications company in the United States which provides high definition videoconferencing endpoints and accessories, touchscreen conference room phones, a cloud-based video collaboration platform, and omnichannel contact center solutions under their CxEngage product line. Lifesize's headquarters is located in Austin, Texas. Its Europe, Middle East and Africa regional office is located in Munich, Germany.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hitachi Data Systems</span> Data storage provider

Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) was a provider of modular mid-range and high-end computer data storage systems, software, and services. Its operations are now a part of Hitachi Vantara.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">StorSimple</span>

StorSimple was a privately held company based in Santa Clara, California, marketing cloud storage. It was funded by venture capital from Index Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, Ignition Partners, and Mayfield Fund for a total of $31.5 million.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Menlo Ventures</span> American venture capital firm

Menlo Ventures is a venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, California with an additional office in San Francisco, California. The firm was founded as one of the earliest venture capital firms in Silicon Valley in 1976 and provides technology venture capital funding for seed, early stage and growth companies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">CTERA Networks</span> Multinational enterprise software company

CTERA Networks is a privately held enterprise software company headquartered in New York and Israel. The company has regional offices in the UK, Italy, France, Spain, Germany, and Australia. As of 2021, the company is designated as the leading vendor in distributed cloud file storage by GigaOm.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Silk Platform</span> American cloud storage company

Silk is a technology company headquartered in Needham, Massachusetts, United States. Silk offers a cloud platform for enterprise customers with mission-critical applications. The company has offices in Boston and Israel.

Zadara is a cloud computing company founded in 2011, with headquarters in Irvine, California. The company develops computer software that it markets as storage-as-a-service, which can be used for cloud or on-premises servers, a model sometimes called private cloud.

Apptio is a Bellevue, Washington-based company founded in 2007 that develops technology business management (TBM) software as a service (SaaS) applications. Apptio enterprise apps are designed to assess and communicate the cost of IT services for planning, budgeting and forecasting purposes; Apptio's services offer tools for CIOs to manage technology departments' storage, applications, energy usage, cybersecurity, and reporting obligations; manage the costs of public cloud, migration to public cloud and SaaS portfolios; and adopt and scale Agile across the enterprise.

Michael L. Kazar is an American engineer and technology executive.

Scality is a global technology provider of software-defined storage (SDS) solutions, specializing in distributed file and object storage with cloud data management. Scality maintains offices in Paris (France), London (UK), San Francisco and Washington DC (USA), and Tokyo (Japan) and has employees in 14 countries.

ThousandEyes, Inc. is a network intelligence company headquartered in San Francisco with offices in Dublin, London, New York, Tokyo, and Austin, Texas. The company produces software that analyzes the performance of local and wide area networks. On May 29, 2020, Cisco announced it would be acquiring ThousandEyes.

Nasuni is a privately-held hybrid cloud storage company with headquarters in Boston, Massachusetts.

Sierra Ventures is an American venture capital firm based in San Mateo, California. It targets startups in sectors including enterprise tech, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and healthcare.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Datto (company)</span> American cybersecurity and data backup company

Datto, Inc. is an American cybersecurity and data backup company. In 2017, it was acquired by Vista Equity Partners. In 2022, it became a subsidiary of Kaseya.

Fungible Inc. is a technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. The company develops hardware and software to improve the performance, reliability and economics of data centers.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Jordan Novet (July 10, 2014). "Avere raises $20M to deliver scalable storage for hybrid clouds". Venture Beat. Retrieved February 17, 2017.
  2. "Avere Systems, Inc". Bloomberg. Retrieved 3 August 2017.
  3. 1 2 "Microsoft buying cloud storage startup Avere Systems". Seattle Times . 3 January 2018. Retrieved 3 January 2018.
  4. 1 2 Novet, Jordan (2018-01-03). "Microsoft buys Avere to boost its hybrid cloud strategy; start-up counted Google among investors". CNBC. Retrieved 2020-07-27.
  5. 1 2 Peter Judge. "CDC chooses Avere for Data Center Project". datacenterdynamics.com. Data Center Dynamics. Retrieved 23 November 2016.
  6. 1 2 "Avere Wins Library of Congress Data Storage Deal". Bizjournals.com. 2013. Retrieved 2014-03-25.
  7. "Menlo Ventures Portfolio". Menlo Ventures. 2014. Archived from the original on 2014-03-30. Retrieved 2014-03-25.
  8. "Norwest Venture Portfolio". Norwest Venture Portfolio. 2014. Archived from the original on 2014-04-13. Retrieved 2014-03-25.
  9. "Avere Closes $17 Million Series B Funding Round". Eweek.com. 2014. Retrieved 2014-03-25.
  10. "Tenaya Capital Portfolio". Tenaya Capital. 2014. Retrieved 2014-03-25.
  11. "Avere Raises 20 million in Series C funding". LSVP. 2012. Archived from the original on 2014-04-13. Retrieved 2014-03-25.
  12. "LSVP Enterprise Portfolio". LSVP. 2012. Retrieved 2014-03-25.
  13. "Avere raises $20 million in Series D venture funding". Press release. July 10, 2014. Retrieved November 17, 2016.
  14. "Cohon, Nordenberg lead winners of Carnegie Science Awards for Universities' Collaboration". CRN.com. 2013. Retrieved 2014-03-25.
  15. "Carnegie Science Center Awardees".
  16. Dan Kobialka (July 11, 2014). "Avere Systems Adds $20M in Series D Funds". Talkin Cloud. Retrieved February 17, 2017.
  17. Marzouk, Zach (June 21, 2017). "The IT Press Tour: StrongBox Data Solutions, Avere Systems and E8 Storage". IT Pro. Retrieved July 16, 2017.
  18. 1 2 Weinberger, Matt (March 21, 2017). "Google Made an Unusual Move by Investing Millions in this Pittsburgh Storage Startup". Business Insider. Retrieved May 18, 2017.
  19. "Avere Introduces Virtual FXT Edge Filer". EnterpriseTech. 5 November 2014. Retrieved 5 February 2015.
  20. 1 2 3 Jeff Hyatt (June 2, 2016). "Avere Systems: Making Sense of Unstructured Data". Media & Entertainment Services Alliance. Retrieved February 17, 2017.
  21. Eric Doyle (April 18, 2016). "Avere brings FXT 5000 features to the lower end of the market". Datacenter Dynamics. Retrieved February 17, 2017.
  22. Anthony Adshead (September 29, 2016). "Is it NAS? Is it object storage? It's both. It's Avere's C2N". Computer Weekly. Retrieved February 17, 2017.
  23. Adam Armstron (September 20, 2016). "Avere Unveils Cloud-Core NAS (C2N) System". Storage Review. Retrieved February 17, 2017.
  24. "All Published SPEC SFS2008 Results".
  25. Chris Mellor (September 17, 2015). "Avere's SwiftStack S3 hack tack". The Register. Retrieved February 17, 2017.
  26. Debra Smit (December 6, 2016). "Avere Systems CEO views data storage from the cloud". Crain's Pittsburgh. Retrieved February 17, 2017.
  27. "Dreamworks' Storage Tiers Help Animate Movie Making". Search Storage. 2013. Retrieved 2014-03-25.
  28. "Private NAS Cloud Saves Digital Production Studio Millions of Dollars". Search Storage. 2012. Retrieved 2014-03-25.
  29. "The Hidden Data Magic Behind 'Zero Dark Thirty'". Bloomberg. 2012. Retrieved 2014-03-25.
  30. "Avere Systems Keeps CGI specialists Framestore Rolling". Computing.co.uk. 2012. Retrieved 2014-03-25.