Solving the Data Deluge

Data underlies every Web site, gaming company, social network and enterprise computing environment. We’re talking massive quantities, too, created by users and computers, and getting bigger all the time.  In fact, we’ve run out of room to store all of the data we produce, with IDC finding that the amount of information created, captured or replicated exceeded available storage for the first time in 2007 and that the size of the digital universe this year would be tenfold the size it was just five years earlier. This is a problem that is not getting easier to solve. Solutions that enable us to more effectively store and manage data will quite possibly be one of the fundamental breakthroughs in information processing.

Enter Actifio, a fast-growing data management company whose entire purpose is to enable highly efficient storing of information. When I met the company this past fall, they presented a study that illustrated the data problem more clearly than anything else I had seen: For every piece of data created, there can be up to 12 replicas of that data that then get stored in various places. Think about that.  Twelve additional copies made for tasks such as backup, global replication, disaster recovery, data analysis, etc.  No wonder there is a data deluge problem.

Imagine the positive impact on our ability to manage information if only one copy of data was needed for all use cases. This is exactly what Actifio does. We at Andreessen Horowitz are very excited to have led their most recent round of funding.

We are equally excited to be working with one of the best storage teams in the industry. Ash Ashutosh is a technical CEO/founder who has deep domain expertise. Furthermore, the team that Ash has assembled will enable the company to scale substantially from where it is today. I am joining Actifio’s board and personally look forward to working closely with the team.

Finally, Actifio’s product is truly revolutionizing the sleepy, decades-old backup market by providing an elegant and modern solution that condenses multiple data management tasks into a single use case. Current Actifio customers describe the product as simple to use, complete, and scalable, without the expense and headache of multiple existing solutions. There’s no better validation than what customers have to say and there are a lot of happy Actifio users.

At Andreessen Horowitz, we want to make sure we are invested in the most influential software companies, regardless of stage. Actifio has the team, market opportunity, and product to be one of the most influential companies in enterprise infrastructure. Andreessen Horowitz led this recent round, joining existing investors Northbridge, Greylock and Advanced Technology Ventures. The $33.5 million Series C financing gives the company the ability to programmatically scale, ultimately bringing Actifio to a data center near you.