Qumulo Secures Round C Prime Funding – My Conversation with Bill Richter

Qumulo logoToday, Qumulo, vendor of the software-defined scale-out storage platform Qumulo Core, announced the completion a funding round of $30 Million. This C Prime round of funding brings the total amount invested in Qumulo to date to $130 Million.

This new funding round was led by Northern Light Venture Capital and other first-time investors in Qumulo. Previous Qumulo investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers (KPCB), Madrona Venture Group, Top Tier Capital Partners, and Tyche Partners also participated in this round.

This new round of investment in Qumulo follows some recent management changes that include the appointments of

  • Bill Richter (formerly of Isilon) as CEO
  • Jay Wampold as Vice President of Marketing
  • Eric Scollard as Vice President of Worldwide Sales

As long-time readers will know, I’ve been a fan of Qumulo since the beginning. At my previous employer, I was the PreSales Engineer in a deal where we sold a Qumulo cluster even before the company had emerged from stealth mode. At Qumulo’s invitation, I attended the company’s launch party.

So, you can imagine my excitement when Bill Richter and Jay Wampold took some time out of their busy day yesterday to spend some time speaking with me about today’s announcement and anything else I felt like asking them. Continue reading

Qumulo Core 2.5 is Now GA

Qumulo logoOn 15 November, Qumulo announced the availability of version 2.5 of their Qumulo Core software layer for their scale-out NAS platform.

I’ve been involved with Qumulo since they came out of stealth approximately 18 months ago — I actually helped sell a Qumulo cluster to one of our customers while Qumulo was still operating in stealth mode — so it will come as no surprise that I’m a fan.

Continue reading

Qumulo Adds Erasure Coding, Predictive Analytics, and Three New Hardware Models

Qumulo logoToday, Qumulo, a scale-out NAS vendor, announced a major new version of their operating environment, Qumulo Core 2.0, and three new hardware models.

Qumulo is hybrid storage, meaning each node has both Flash and spinning disks. The Flash layer (in this case SSDs) is used for performance and the HDD layer for capacity. Data is moved between these two tiers automatically without end-user action or even awareness.

I’ve written about Qumulo before: I was there at their launch party when they emerged from stealth, and, more recently, I wrote about their new high-density node. I was also directly involved in my company’s first sale of a Qumulo cluster — while the company was still in stealth mode.

I mention this partly to get the “yes, I’m a fan” out of the way early, and partly to give some weight to this statement: this is (in my debatably humble opinion) their best announcement to date. Continue reading

Qumulo Announces New High-Density Storage Node

Qumulo logoLess than one month after emerging from stealth, storage startup Qumulo announced the availability of a new high-capacity storage node today. The announcement was timed with Qumulo’s attendance at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) show.

Qumulo makes a data-aware scale-out NAS storage platform. Their combination of easy management and real-time analytics makes it possible for customers to focus on their data, rather than on their storage. If you’re not already familiar with Qumulo, you can read my introduction to them here.

What Was Announced Continue reading

Qumulo Comes Out of Stealth Offering Data-Aware Scale-Out NAS

Qumulo NodesI’ve let several people know that I’m traveling today, and I even told some folks that I was in Seattle, but it wasn’t until today that I can go public on why I’m here.

Today, storage startup Qumulo came out of stealth mode. My company, Accunet Solutions, was involved in one of the first Qumulo sales and implementations. Our customer was invited to attend Qumulo’s launch event, and, as the SE involved with the deal, I also scored an invite.

Qumulo offers data-aware scale-out NAS that is remarkably simple to install and manage. I’ll go through details on both the company and the product below. Continue reading

Stealth Storage Startup Qumulo Closes Series B Round of Funding

Last week, storage startup Qumulo completed a Series B round of funding, gaining an additional $40 Million in investor backing — while still in “stealth mode”. This new round of funding brings the total amount invested in Qumulo to $67 Million.

Qumulo hasn’t revealed much about themselves or their products publicly, despite having some customers who’ve deployed their product in Production. Their three co-founders all worked together as software engineers at Isilon Systems (acquired by EMC in 2010).

I have a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) with Qumulo, and here are the two things I believe I’m allowed to reveal under that NDA: Continue reading