Enterprise solid-state storage system maker Skyera announced that it received funding from Western Digital as part of its $51 million Series B round of financing. The two companies say the investment is an extension of a strategic relationship that includes joint technology development.
The money will be used to scale Skyera’s business across marketing, sales, and engineering, said chief executive officer Radoslav Danilak in a statement. Western Digital previously funded Skyera as its initial outside investor, and its other backers include Dell Ventures, which also contributed to this round of funding.
“One of our primary goals in developing strategic relationships with technology innovators in the broader storage ecosystem is to enable customers to develop highly optimized storage solutions that meet their changing data management needs,” Western Digital president and CEO Steve Milligan said in the press release.
Gartner estimates that corporations will spend $4.5 billion on solid-state drives, which offer quick and energy-efficient performance, in 2015, up from just under $1 billion in 2010, so it makes sense for larger tech companies to get in on the action. But Skyera does have plenty of competition from companies like EMC, Fusion-io, STEC, Violin Memory, and OCZ.