RainStor raises $12M to compress big data

The company gets support from Credit Suisse and Rogers Venture Partners

I’m hard-pressed to think of a sexier way to kick off my Thursday than with some big data storage news.  Database solutions provider RainStor announced Thursday that it has raised $12 million of Series C funding from Credit Suisse and Rogers Venture Partners.  The round also saw participation from existing investors Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures, Storm Ventures, and the Dow Chemical Company. 

The new capital brings RainStor’s total raised to $23.5 million.

Serving some of the world’s largest banks and telecommunication companies, RainStor offers customers a Big Data database that allows them to keep and access as much data as they want for as long as they want. 

For example, RainStor VP of Product Management Ramon Chen tells me that one Japanese telecommunications company uses RainStor to store every single WAP log (Wireless Access Protocol log—when someone accesses a Web page from a smartphone) generated by any cell phone in their network.  This translates to 19 billion logs per day, for a total of two Petabytes of raw data.  RainStor compresses the data down to one-twentieth of its size so that it can be stored in 100 Terabytes of space.  The cost to store the data would otherwise run in the tens of millions.

Another Fortune 500 company uses RainStor alongside its own data warehouse to offload data so that they can keep more of it accessible without the need for additional infrastructure.

Big Data is all the rage these days.  This time last year, Accel announced the creation of a $100 million fund for startups focusing on Big Data.  The fund will support companies ranging from next generation storage and data management platforms to a wide range of revolutionary software applications.

“Data growth for all industries is exploding exponentially and RainStor's unique technology can physically reduce the storage footprint required to keep the data, while still providing on demand access,” said Chen.

Founded in 2004, RainStor has been adopted by more than 100 global enterprises and has seen revenue double each year.

“Driven by compliance regulations, banks and financial institutions are now required to retain and analyze petabytes of data,” said Peter Norley of Credit Suisse, in a statement.  “Compounded by rapid growth, current needs exceed the capacity of existing database and data warehouse environments. RainStor has built a unique combination of database capabilities that have proven essential for financial institutions in order to sustain growth levels in the most cost effective way, while meeting regulatory needs.”

The company plans to use the new funds from this round to accelerate engineering and beef up its sales and marketing team.

Image source: businessweek.com