Virsto adds $5 million to its $12 million Series B

Storage virtualization optimization still a big problem, investors see fit to add support

Virsto, provider of storage virtualization software, announced Thursday that it has added another $5 million to the $12 million Series B raised in June of this year, bringing the round total to $17 million.

New investors Southern Cross Venture Partners and Correlation Ventures join previous partners InterWest Partners, August Capital and Canaan Partners. (It’s worth noting that InterWest was the one to originally lead the Series B. Also: Southern Cross had invested in EvoStor, an Australia-based VMware developer which Virsto acquired earlier this year.)

Added to a $7 million Series A from June 2009, the new capital brings Virsto’s total raised to over $25 million.

“After announcing the first tranche of our series B equity round in June, the inbound interest from venture and strategic investors was overwhelming,” says Mark Davis, CEO of Virsto, in a press release. “Given the size of the opportunity we face, we decided to add to our war chest so we can pursue a number of strategic initiatives.

“The Virsto vision is to transform data storage in virtualized computing and in the process radically alter the economics for our enterprise and cloud customers.  This additional capital will allow us to leverage our technology into more markets and expand alliances with hardware, software, and cloud partners.”

Partnered with Citrix, Microsoft and VMware, Virsto offers optimized virtual storage architecture designed to reduce capacity consumption by up to 90 percent. The company provides solutions for virtual desktops, virtual servers and cloud computing, which, as magical as it sounds to the consumers, demands equal (if not higher) attention to storage issues as your typical server virtualization software.

Other companies in Virsto's space include FlashSoft and VeloBit.

The new funding will be used to accelerate growth, partnerships and hiring, as well as to facilitate the company’s entrance into the VMware market this year.