Cloudian's new $24M shows cloud storage isn't an all-or-nothing proposition

Investors are betting big money on hybrid cloud storage as an attractive option for enterprises.

Hybrid cloud vendor Cloudian has raised $24 million in new funding, the company announced today, bringing its total financing to $44 million.

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Cloudian’s thesis is that cloud storage often works best when paired with on-premises storage. That dual approach offers companies the speed and scalability of cloud services like Amazon Web Services, CloudStack, and OpenStack — Cloudian works with all three — while enabling enterprises to keep their most sensitive data on their own private servers.

Cloudian chief executive Michael Tso is keen to differentiate his company’s offering from cloud storage services like Box, Dropbox, and Egnyte.

“Cloudian is eternal storage, in the same space as NetApp, EMC, and AWS S3,” Tso wrote in an email to VentureBeat.

“In an enterprise, Cloudian would be the storage infrastructure for storing any data, and Egnyte could be the application used to share files that might be stored in Cloudian, NetApp, or EMC gear,” he explained.

EMC today announced its acquisition TwinStrata, a Cloudian competitor, as part of its own hybrid cloud push.

Cloudian’s new $24 million comes from the Innovation Corporate Network of Japan (INCJ) and Fidelity Growth Partners Japan, as well as existing investors Intel Capital and Goldman Sachs.

California-based Cloudian has a solid foothold in the Japanese market, serving large Japanese corporations like telecom firm NTT Communications and Internet service provider Nifty.