Multi-Cloud Data Protection Vendor HYCU Closes $87.5M Funding Round

‘As the cloud and multi-cloud environments take root, the channel is evolving. There’s interest in supporting customers with storage for their journey to the cloud. We want to make sure the channel is a key part of our strategy and make sure it’s a primary driver of our strategy,’ says HYCU CEO Simon Taylor.

HYCU, which started off as a developer of data protection technologies geared primarily toward Nutanix hyperconverged infrastructure environments before moving into multi-cloud deployments, Tuesday unveiled the closing of its first funding round, which brought it $87.5 million.

HYCU, which was founded in April 2018, managed to stay completely private for a very long time before working with Bain Capital Ventures, which is leading the A round of funding, said Simon Taylor, CEO of the Boston-based storage technology vendor.

“We got to be as scrappy as heck,” Taylor told CRN. “But we had to keep an eye on our cash and had to make some trade-offs. But it didn’t impact our customers. But now we’re seeing an explosion in the need to protect data in the cloud. We met with Bain, which has a large depth of experience which will be important to our growth.”

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After initially protecting data in Nutanix environments, HYCU then moved to VMware environments before providing Backup as a Service for the Google Cloud Platform, Taylor said. The company also developed data protection for workloads in Microsoft Azure and VMware on Amazon Web Services, and is expected to have an offering specific to AWS workloads some time this year, he said.

“And we have knitted them all together in our data platform, HYCU Protege,” he said.

HYCU currently has about 2,000 customers in over 70 countries served by over 300 channel partners including just over 200 partners in the U.S., Taylor said.

“Now we want to hit the growth button,” he said. “We want to pour gas on the fire.”

HYCU plans to use a big part of the new funding to add over 100 employees, primarily in the Boston corporate office, Taylor said.

“This includes both salespeople and customer success people,” he said. “It’s important to focus on the satisfaction of our customer base. We always want to make sure customers are happy with what we do.”

HYCU is also investing on the channel side of its business, which accounts for nearly all of the company’s revenue, Taylor said. This includes hiring several new channel-oriented people worldwide to support its partners with a focus on multi-cloud data protection, he said.

“As the cloud and multi-cloud environments take root, the channel is evolving,” he said. “There’s interest in supporting customers with storage for their journey to the cloud. We want to make sure the channel is a key part of our strategy and make sure it’s a primary driver of our strategy. We want to find out from channel partners what we need to be successful and then answer the call.”

Taylor told CRN that going forward the company is focusing on scale, and not on acquisitions per se.

“Our goal is ultimately to go public,” he said. “As we become the dominant leader in Backup as a Service, we want to make we reach as many customers as possible around the world.”