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Indian Startup vet brings in cloud data service
By siliconindia
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Monday, 18 October 2010, 08:37 IST
Massachusetts: To those who are familiar with desktop virtualization, Ash Ashutosh's new venture may sound synonymous as Actifio is applying similar technology - that of creating a virtual environment - for data protection and storage. Startup veteran Ash Ashutosh, Founder and CEO of Waltham Based Actifio, is back after a hiatus and this time he surely is in the game.
Ashutosh who is a storage veteran and a partner at VC firm Greylock Partners also founded software company AppIQ in 2001. Ashutosh's firm recently emerged from its 18-month long stealth mode in mid-August with $8 million in first round funding and what it is calling data management virtualization, a way of reducing stored data by about 80 percent compared to traditional methods that the company believes will revolutionize the way users will store, protect and recover data. Greylock Partners and Northbridge Venture Partners contributed to the round.
Actifio, which has two development offices, one in Waltham and another in Hyderabad, simplifies data management by using a single piece of software designed to handle what traditionally takes up to five different applications. Actifio's new software addresses an increasing demand for more and more storage space on company computers as the number of processes requiring back-up increases exponentially. The software is able to achieve this by reducing the volume of data by eliminating the need to replicate data whenever the data undergoes even slight changes.
Some of Actifio's $8 million will go towards unveiling Actifio's products to as wide an audience as possible, beginning with an appearance later this year at VMWorld show in Los Angeles said Ashutosh, who has a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the Pennsylvania University and a master's degree in computer science from the same. Actifio's customers include some big names in the technology space, including digital marketing and event Management Company Cramer; Airvana, a mobile wireless company; and Focus, an infrastructure services company. One thing Ashotush said he learned from his time in the storage industry is to avoid prioritizing paying the bills over staying true to a company's vision.