Pure Storage, the all-flash enterprise storage array vendor, has closed a $225 million Series F funding round, at a pre-money valuation of over $3 billion. The new funding brings the company’s total capital raised to $470 million to date, and will support increased investments in engineering, sales, marketing and channel partner enablement.
Pure Storage’s FlashArray storage solution is a product used for high performance workloads, including server virtualization, database (OLTP, real-time analytics), and cloud hosting environments. The new investment round included contributions from previous public market investors including T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc. and Tiger Global and new investor, Wellington Management Company.
“This financing at over a $3 billion pre-money valuation is a huge milestone for Pure Storage,” said Scott Dietzen, Pure Storage, CEO. “Yes, it reinforces the health and standout growth of our business to date, but more importantly, the disruptive potential of an all-flash array that costs less than disk going forward. In 2014, no one should be buying mechanical disk to run databases or virtual machines. Our additional funding ensures that many more businesses will get the ten-fold performance acceleration and power savings of Pure Storage.”
Channel strategy
Over the past year, the company has consistently achieved 50 percent sequential quarterly growth, and continued aggressive international expansion, opening new offices across four continents. In 2013 the company grew its global customer base by 650 percent and crossed a go-to-market tipping point, shipping its 1000th FlashArray to customers worldwide since inception.
Pure Storage’s commitment to operating as a channel-centric organization would have resulted in a threefold increase in channel productivity in the last year, through a multi-tiered network of more than 200 partner organizations.
Storage industry veteran
Recently, Pure Storage appointed Kevin Delane as vice president of global alliances and business development to lead the company in developing key strategic channel and technology partnerships. As a veteran of the enterprise storage industry, Delane brings decades of sales and go-to-market experience to the company. He previously held executive leadership roles at IO and EMC.
The Pure Storage FlashArray would be ideal for high performance workloads, including server virtualization, desktop virtualization (VDI), database (OLTP, real-time analytics) and cloud hosting environments.
