Nasuni Closes New Round Of Funding, Plans To Invest In Channel Sales, Go-To-Market Expansion

Nasuni, a developer of technology allowing access of data stored in public and private clouds to be easily and safely accessed from any location, has closed what it expects will be its final round of funding.

That E-round of funding, worth $17.5 million, was paired with the closing of $7.5 million in venture debt financing, brings total funding in the Natick, Mass.-based company to $80.5 million, the company announced Tuesday.

Nasuni provides a combination of local edge appliances and cloud storage to give customers scalable global access to data with local performance. Nasuni also provides protection, archiving, security, and management of file data storage.

[Related: Moving Data To The Cloud: 16 Offerings Taking Advantage Of Existing Clouds]

The funding came from previous investors, including a large strategic investor, said Scott Dussault, chief operation officer and chief financial officer. Dussault declined to name the strategic investor. However, he did not deny that the large strategic investor could be IBM, Microsoft, or Dell, all of which are Nasuni's top strategic technology partners.

"A strategic investor led a round of investment years ago," he said. "It also participated in this new round. It's a very large tech company and a good strategic partner. We have an alliance agreement with them."

Given that Nasuni is still a private company, Dussault declined to talk in details about the company's financials. However, he said Nasuni is in "hyper growth" mode, with bookings up year-over-year by over 75 percent.

Nasuni could reach the cash flow break-even point in 2018, but is not sure it even needs to be, Dussault said. "We're investing in all areas of the company," he said. "Most of our current thinking is, we will focus on expanding our go-to-market in the first half of 2017. Currently, almost 100 percent of our customer fulfillment is through channel partners, and we plan to expand the number of channel sales reps."

Nasuni currently has about 115 employees, up from about 100 people a year ago, Dussault said. That number is likely to grow to 150 by the end of 2017, he said.

Mark Galyardt, executive vice president at XIOSS, an Atlanta-based solution provider, and one of the first channel partners to sign with Nasuni when both were very young companies, told CRN he likes working with the vendor. "[Nasuni President and CEO] Andres Rodriguez is one of my favorite propeller heads in the world," Galyardt said. "He's a very smart guy, dynamic and full of energy."

Getting new funding in itself is not the big story for Nasuni's customers, Galyardt said. "Funding doesn't really move the needle," he said. "Nasuni has great technology which excites clients. But the new round of funding is validation of the technology."