Pliant Technology raises $15 Million in series C funding

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Milpitas: Pliant Technology, developer of Enterprise Flash Drives (EFDs), a new class of high-performance solid state storage devices for the enterprise, has received $15 million in Series C funding. Pliant's EFDs are designed to deliver dramatically higher levels of I/O performance while meeting the growing need for increased energy efficiency and reliability in enterprise computing environments. Pliant plans to use the series C funding as working capital to support the volume production ramp-up of its first EFD solutions. The company will also leverage the funding to begin expanding its EFD product portfolio. Pliant began delivery of initial EFD units to major OEMs in late 2008. Pliant's Series C funding round includes the addition of Menlo Ventures, one of the world's largest VC firms focusing on the information technology sector, and its Managing Director Mark A. Siegel has joined Pliant's board of directors. "Pliant has generated substantial interest among the industry's top system and storage server OEMs," said Siegel. "The ability of Pliant's leadership team to raise this amount of funding underscores the tremendous value its advanced EFD technology can offer enterprise data centers, including dramatic I/O performance gains, as well as significant reductions in energy consumption and IT costs." Other leading VC firms investing in the Series C round, as well as in previous rounds, include Lightspeed Venture Partners, Arcturus Capital, and Divergent Ventures. Amyl Ahola, CEO of Pliant Technology, said, "We continue to meet all key product and company milestones, and we are well on track to begin volume production of our first EFDs."