Egnyte raises $6M more to bring small businesses into the cloud

Egnyte, a startup that allows small and medium businesses to store and collaborate on their files online, has raised $6 million in new funding.

Amid the many web-based storage and collaboration options out there, Egnyte has a clear focus — it’s trying to replace the traditional file server for relatively small companies with a solution that takes advantage of the web. Features include automatically saving multiple versions of a file, a system that lets administrators control who can read/write/delete each file, and a way to send links to embedded versions of large files (such as videos), rather than emailing the file itself.

The fact that pricing starts at $10 per user per month, making it much cheaper for most small businesses than an on-site server, doesn’t hurt either.

The Mountain View, Calif. company says that for the past six months, revenue has been growing 15 percent month-over-month, and it points to still-growing business interest in cloud computing (namely, accessing your applications, storage, and other computing functions remotely, while it resides on someone else’s hardware) as a reason for continued optimism. On other hand, the growing number of web-based office applications, like Google Apps and the web version of Microsoft’s upcoming Office 2010, could eventually pose a threat — if you’re writing your documents, saving them online, and collaborating with teammates all via the Office web app, then you probably don’t need to save and share on Egnyte, too.

In March, Egnyte announced a new product called the Egnyte “Local Cloud,” combining hosted cloud storage with on-premise storage, which could help address security and reliability concerns, particularly from larger companies.

The new funding comes from Polaris Venture Partners and previous investor Maples Investments, which also led Egnyte’s seed round last year.