Opening Up: 9 Privately Held Storage Vendors Break Out Some Financials

Filtering A Little Daylight Into The Dark

Unless you are a prospective equity investor, trying to get financial information about privately held companies is difficult. However, a few private storage vendors early this year provided some details into their financials for 2015.

Keep in mind that, with the exception of Nutanix, which was gearing up for an IPO, the kind of data provided by such companies has not been prepared according to the strict regulations public companies must file when reporting revenue, earning, and other financial data. Many of these startups report "record" growth in a number of areas, but it is understood that this growth is based off fairly small comparisons.

Here are nine storage vendors that provided a look at their numbers for 2015.

Cloudian Says It Saw 300 Percent Revenue Growth In 2015

Cloudian, a developer of software-defined storage and object storage technology completely compatible with Amazon S3, on Feb. 11 said 2015 sales of its HyperStore software grew 300 percent due to a doubling of its customer base over 2014. That resulted in 500 percent growth in the amount of data stored in its Cloudian HyperStore object storage solution, the company said.

Cloudian also said customers selected Cloudian HyperStore as their storage technology choice 90 percent of the time after evaluating object storage solutions, and said it had a zero percent customer churn rate.

In 2015, Cloudian said it introduced two major versions of its HyperStore software along with new appliance versions, and increased the number of reseller and technology partners to more than 50 companies.

Exablox Touts 400 Percent Revenue Growth In 2015

Exablox, a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based developer of a series of appliances providing cloud-based storage and information management, said on Feb. 24 that its 2015 revenue grew 400 percent over that of 2014 due in large part to high-profile customer wins with companies such as Lockheed Martin, Virgin Media, Kawasaki Motors and Southwest Research Institute, and in part to strong repeat business.

The year also saw the number of objects stored on Exablox's OneBlox architecture grow 550 percent to more than 165 billion objects, according to the company. Exablox in 2015 introduced its second-generation solution and closed a C round of funding worth $23 million, bringing total funding in the company to $45.5 million. New investors included Dell Ventures and Toshiba America Electronic Components.

Infinidat Says 2015 Revenue Grew 331 Percent

Infinidat, a Needham, Mass.-based developer of high-performance, scalable storage solutions that early last year closed a $150 million funding round, said on Feb. 8 that its fourth-quarter 2015 sales grew 183 percent over the third quarter, capping a good year for the company, which said it saw 2015 sales grow 331 percent over 2014 sales. That was driven by a doubling of capacity shipped during the year.

Infinidat signed agreements with 25 new solution providers and distributors in the fourth quarter, a growth that enabled 49 percent of the company's revenue to come from indirect channels. New international customers accounted for 32 percent of 2015 sales, Infinidat said. New customers signing with Infinidat in the fourth quarter included Health Data Innovations, Brightsolid, Helios IT, Yeo Tech, Nxtra Data and Meitav Dash.

Kaminario Triples Company Size

Enterprise-class all-flash array vendor Kaminario on Jan. 28 reported that over the last five quarters the Needham, Mass.-based company's headcount tripled, and that the company added 65 new channel partners to its Accelerate channel program.

Kaminario also said it grew its customer roster by 150 percent, and counted among its new clients such companies as Clarizen, Payoneer and Dot Foods. The year also saw the opening of a new 8,000-square-foot headquarters.

Nasuni Bookings From Existing Customers Up 173 Percent

Nasuni, a Natick, Mass.-based provider of cloud-based NAS technology, said on Feb. 10 that its 2015 annual recurring revenue grew 84 percent over 2014, and that it expects total revenue growth in 2016 to more than double. That growth was due to signing a record number of new customers in 2015 that drove a 70 percent growth in capacity subscription revenue for the year over last year.

Nasuni said that it had 223 production customers by the end of 2015, which was up 58 percent over 2014. Those customers managed to help Nasuni grow the total terabytes managed by the company by 111 percent during 2015, the company said.

Nutanix Makes Its Growth Official

One of the top non-public storage vendors, San Jose, Calif.-based Nutanix published official annual revenue and loss as part of its S-1 filing in preparation for an IPO early this year. However, Nutanix has delayed its IPO due to market conditions, according to industry reports.

Nutanix, a leading developer of hyper-converged infrastructure technology, said its audited revenue for fiscal year 2015, which ended July 31, reached $241.4 million, up 90 percent over fiscal year 2014. The company reported a loss of $126.1 million for 2015, up from a loss of $84.0 million the year before.

SimpliVity Doubles Customer Books, Partner Relationships

Hyper-converged infrastructure technology developer SimpliVity on Feb. 9 said its year-over-year bookings doubled over last year, and that its customer base grew by more than 250 percent. The Westborough, Mass.-based company also said it doubled the number of channel partners selling the SimpliVity solution.

The year was also good for SimpliVity's plans to expand its market reach as nearly half of its revenue came from customers outside North America. Customers in 2015 included two of North America's top telecom companies, a top five oil and gas company, a top five entertainment company, and a top five global luxury brand, according to the company.

Veeam Approaches The Half-Billion-Dollar Mark

Veeam, the Baar, Switzerland-based developer of data protection technology for virtualized and cloud environments, on Jan. 26 said its total 2015 bookings hit $474 million, up about 22 percent over the past year, anchored by a 34 percent year-over-year increase in enterprise revenue. The company expects revenue to hit the billion-dollar mark by 2018.

Veeam said the cloud, particularly demand for disaster recovery as a service, was a big growth driver for the company in 2015. The company reported it now has more than 10,000 service and cloud providers in its Veeam Cloud & Service Provider (VCSP) program. They pushed a 75 percent increase in the number of transactions year over year.

Worldwide, Veeam said it has 183,000 customers, up by 15,000 over 2014, and works with 37,000 channel partners.

Zadara Reports 300 Percent Sales Growth

Zadara Storage, an Irvine, Calif.-based developer of enterprise-class storage-as-a-service technology, on Feb. 2 said that its 2015 sales tripled those of 2014, with sales outside the U.S. growing by 400 percent. The company said it saw 45 percent growth in its customer base during the year.

About 26 percent of Zadara's sales came from its Zadara On-Premise as a Service offering, the company said.