Scality Adds New Investor in Latest Funding Round

Scality, the software-defined object and cloud storage vendor, is extending its push into the multi-cloud data control sector with the closing of a $60 million funding round.

The storage management and infrastructure vendor said Tuesday (April 17) its latest round added new investor Harbert European Growth Capital along with existing investors and company executives. The San Francisco-based company has so far raised $152 million in seven funding rounds.

An early adopter of Docker containers, Scality released an open source data controller last year aimed at developers seeking multi-cloud storage options as unstructured data volumes soar. The Zenko data controller is built around a cross-cloud interface based on an Amazon Web Services (NASDAQ: AMZN) Simple Storage Service (S3) API. The interface allows developers, for example, to link to a cloud with the same API and access layer while at the same time storing data in its native format.

In September, Scality extended its cloud connection tool to Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) Azure Blob Storage. The link stores data in an Azure native format and allows applications that work with AWS S3 to support Azure Blob Storage without modification.

The goal of these and other tools is to ease the transition to multi-cloud infrastructure via flexible file and object interfaces, the company said, including standard S3 storage while integrating storage with enterprise applications.

Scality and other cloud vendors have jumped on the multi-cloud bandwagon as more companies seek to avoid hardware and cloud vender lock-in via a multi-cloud strategy. At the same time, they are offering business analysts and data scientists ready access to huge data volumes stored in public clouds.

The Zenko data controller is based on Scality’s S3 server, the open source implementation of the AWS storage API. Along with Amazon S3 and Azure Blob Storage, the data controller works with Docker containers and Scality’s RING software-defined file and object storage platform. Scality has said Zenko would also be available soon for other cloud platforms.

Among the hurdles to multi-cloud rollouts is the fact that many current applications must still be rewritten to support individual clouds. The duplication makes multiple clouds more expensive. Hence, Scality is targeting application developers looking to speed deployment of distributed apps. The company asserts that its tools would allow developers to build applications once and then deploy them across different cloud services.

In its annual survey of the storage market, Gartner Inc. (NYSE: IT) reported in October thatvendors are introducing “scalable storage clustered file systems and object storage products to address cost and scalability limitations in traditional, scale-up storage environments.” Many of those platforms target growing volumes of unstructured data.

Along with Scality, other vendors meeting growing requirements for storing unstructured data are Dell EMC, IBM (NYSE: IBM), Red Hat (NYSE: RHT), Qumulo and SwiftStack.

Recent items:

Scality Extends Multi-Cloud Storage to Azure

Gartner: Top Storage Vendors Taming Unstructured Data