Axcient, the hybrid cloud-based data backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity startup, has raised $20 million in Series D funding led by Scale Venture Partners and Thomvest Ventures with Peninsula Ventures and Allegis Capital participating. This brings the company’s total funding to $53.5 million.
Founded in 2006, Axcient wants to bring core data protection and recovery solutions to SMBs and large corporations for a reasonable price. Using Axcient, companies can combine storage, backup and disaster-recovery into a single solution. To do so, Axcient sends businesses a small device (typically about the size of a desktop hard drive), which they can set up in as little as 5 minutes and self-connects to Axcient’s cloud as well as the company’s network.
With local, on-site hardware that use local network speeds with the added benefit of the creation of a secure tunnel to Axcient’s cloud, the startup has basically enabled organizations to take advantage of a SaaS-based hybrid cloud model which works for companies with 250GB of data or up to hundreds of terabytes. And the cost to the end-user scales from $100 a month to tens of thousands of dollars per month for enterprises with larger data needs.
The company says the key differentiator for its service is its platform approach, which eliminates a multitude of antiquated technologies such as backup, business continuity, archiving and disaster recovery in favor of a single, unified platform that eliminates downtime and data loss
And thanks to this approach, Axcient is growing fast. The company’s sales were up 100% in 2012, and Axcient protects close to 10 billion files and apps across thousands of organizations. Axcient’s client list includes the Make-a-Wish Foundation, Budget Rent a Car, Union Bank and Cellular One
The new funding is going to be used to hire 50+ people in engineering, sales and marketing in 2013.