Zetta gets $9M infusion for cloud storage solution

The company is backed by Sigma Partners and Foundation Capital

Enterprise cloud storage provider Zetta announced Wednesday that it has raised $9 million in its third round of funding from existing investors Foundation Capital and Sigma Partners.  The new capital brings Zetta’s total raised to $31.5 million.

Founded in 2008, the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company provides off-site enterprise data protection via its NAS cloud storage solution.  The company claims that its storage solution is capable of supporting all unstructured data types. 

Products include ZettaMirror, built on top of the Zetta Storage Service, which includes features like instant restoration by maintaining a mountable copy of users’ data; continuous validation to protect user data from failed restoration; snapshots on the Zetta offsite data storage system to allow users to restore any version of files from up to seven years; and more.

A recent study by Carbonite, an online backup solutions provider, found that 48% of small U.S. businesses with 2-20 employees had experienced some sort of data loss in 2011, with the top causes being hardware/software malfunction, accidental deletion, computer viruses, and theft.  The study also found that physical devices were the most widely used form of backup, including external hard drives, CDs/DVDs, and USB/flash memory.

As SMBs move away from unreliable physical backup methods, cloud storage startups like Zetta will be there to woo them over with their Storage-as-a-Service solutions.

“The storage industry is experiencing a fundamental shift, where an increasing number of organizations are embracing cloud backup over traditional backup solutions,” said Ashmeet Sidana of Foundation Capital, in a statement.  “Zetta’s solution ensures mission-critical data is protected offsite in the most secure way possible.”

“As more small-to-medium organizations make the decision to move their data in the cloud, Zetta becomes an obvious choice, solving their data protection challenges in a cost-effective and extremely secure way,” said Greg Gretsch of Sigma Partners.

Zetta plans to use the new funds for sales, marketing, and product development.