Data center hardware startup Datrium raises $55 million

Data center hardware startup Datrium announced today a funding round of $55 million.

The startup sells to organizations that are building their own private clouds or that act as service providers. Its DVX hardware and software package brings together computing and storage capability in what is known as converged infrastructure. It contains 100TB of storage, including solid state drives (SSDs), and costs $125,000.

“Our product is aimed at replacing midrange storage arrays, which is kind of a dying market,” cofounder and CEO Brian Biles said in an interview with VentureBeat.

The startup is banking on what it calls open convergence — which is its spin on converged infrastructure. “Normally, with this class of product, the amount of storage performance per server goes down as you add servers,” said Biles. “In our case, as you add servers, you add resources for speed, so it gets faster as you add more workloads. And that’s much friendlier to a cloud-style deployment.”

Biles said Datrium’s main competitors are EMC and NetApp, which currently dominate the storage hardware market. Its direct competitor Nutanix recently raised $237.9 million in its initial public offering (IPO).

“Their (Nutanix) approach tends to favor smaller deployments, whereas ours favors enterprise-class deployments,” said Biles, a former EMC executive.

Datrium has more than 50 customers. It will invest the new money in sales, marketing, support, engineering, and international growth. The Sunnyvale, Calif., startup has raised $110 million in total since it was founded in 2012 and now has about 140 employees. New Enterprise Associates (NEA) led the round. Other investors include Lightspeed Venture Partners and a third outside investor (Biles declined to provide that name).