Customer Turns Investor: Leading Investment Firm Inspired to Lead Funding after Transforming IT Operations with SimpliVity’s Hyperconverged Infrastructure

WESTBOROUGH, Mass. - Tuesday, March 10th 2015 [ME NewsWire]

(BUSINESS WIRE) - SimpliVity, a leader in hyperconverged infrastructure for IT, announced today it has raised $175 million in series D funding at a valuation of more than $1 billion – a record achievement just 23 months after general availability of OmniCube, its flagship product. Waypoint Capital, the business enterprise for the Bertarelli family’s investments and headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, led the round. Prior investors Accel Partners, Charles River Ventures, DFJ Growth, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) and Meritech Capital Partners also contributed to the round. SimpliVity’s total venture funding is now $276 million.

Waypoint was inspired to make the investment after transforming its own IT environments across five global sites with SimpliVity’s hyperconverged infrastructure solution.

“As a customer, we experienced first-hand the transformational impact of SimpliVity’s hyperconverged infrastructure. After a thorough analysis of alternatives, we were convinced SimpliVity is technologically superior, and that its unique data architecture is years ahead of the market,” said Frederic Wohlwend, Chief Information and Technology Officer at Waypoint Capital. “When we learned SimpliVity was raising capital, we insisted on taking the lead. We see enormous potential in a company revolutionizing IT, and growing faster than any infrastructure company in recent history.”

“We are honored to have Waypoint join our extremely supportive group of investors. It is a unique and valuable opportunity to have an investor who is truly a customer first – with hands-on SimpliVity product experience,” said Doron Kempel, SimpliVity CEO. “The continued support from our existing investors is incredibly appreciated. Together, these investors give us the greatest strategic latitude for the business as we continue to optimize during this time of hyper growth.”

The financing will be used to fund the rapid expansion of the company and address the explosive market opportunity. Gartner predicts total integrated system spending will grow by a 24 percent CAGR from 2013 through 2018, reaching a total of $19 billion.

SimpliVity launched its hyperconverged infrastructure platform in April 2013 and delivered record growth in 2014. In 2014, SimpliVity grew revenues by more than 500 percent year over year; expanded with resellers into 50 countries and employees in 18; and grew its employee base to more than 400 worldwide. SimpliVity also partnered with Cisco in August 2014 in order to expand its global reach.

Morgan Stanley served as the sole placement agent for SimpliVity.

Supporting Quotes

“Legacy IT infrastructure is due for a shake-up and the market continues to show signs of acceleration,” said Mark Bowker, Senior Analyst, ESG. “There is significant interest in, and momentum behind hyperconverged infrastructure investments. Legacy architectures packaged and delivered with ‘a bow on top’ are failing to achieve the scale and operational efficiency we are seeing IT professionals achieve with a true hyperconverged platform like SimpliVity. This is the wave of the future and the path to modern IT infrastructure.”

“Accel Partners has not only invested in a company with a superior technology and enormous market opportunity, but in a leadership team that’s tuned to deliver,” said early investor and board member Kevin Comolli of Accel Partners. “This team has tremendous vision and one of the best abilities to execute that I’ve seen. SimpliVity has pioneered the hyperconverged infrastructure market and will emerge as a category leader. After just 23 months shipping product, the company has achieved an unprecedented sales trajectory.”

“When we first invested in SimpliVity, we saw a company that had the potential to transform how data is stored, managed and protected in the enterprise, which would truly impact one of the largest markets in technology,” said Bruce Sachs, General Partner, Charles River Ventures. “The growth of the customer base, product and management team has been very impressive and exceeded our expectations. SimpliVity has all of the right ingredients to lead in this market, and we are thrilled to be their business partners during this exciting time.”

“A $1+ billion valuation, and one of the largest rounds of venture capital ever for an enterprise company, are strong testaments to SimpliVity’s tremendous technology and massive addressable market,” said KPCB General Partner, Matt Murphy. “The product uptake and depth of penetration has been breathtaking: fully sixty-five percent of SimpliVity customers standardize all of their virtualized applications on SimpliVity’s platform.”

Additional Resources

    View the video and read the Waypoint case study
    Check out the microsite
    Learn more at SimpliVity’s blog
    Follow SimpliVity on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube and Google+

About Waypoint

Waypoint Capital is a business enterprise for the managers and advisers of the funds and investments associated with the Bertarelli family. The group is active in two areas: life sciences and asset management, including real estate. Chaired by Ernesto Bertarelli, Waypoint is headquartered in Geneva, with offices in London, Jersey, Boston and Luxembourg. Visit www.waypointcapital.net for more information.

About SimpliVity

Founded with a mission to simplify IT, SimpliVity is a pioneer in the hyperconverged infrastructure market, disrupting the status quo of complex and cumbersome legacy IT systems. SimpliVity’s hyperconverged IT platform delivers enterprise-class performance and availability that today’s IT leaders require, with the cloud economics their business demands. No other company has taken on the mega task of assimilating all IT elements below the hypervisor (8-12 disparate functions) into a simple 2U building block of x86 sharable resources to deliver unmatched IT simplicity, operational efficiency, and 3x TCO savings. The company’s unique data virtualization architecture improves performance, protection and data efficiency, while also enabling global unified management from a single console. SimpliVity has revolutionized IT systems for hundreds of enterprises around the world. Headquartered in Westborough, Mass., the company has raised more than $276 million in venture capital and employs more than 400 worldwide. SimpliVity's business model is 100 percent indirect, and its solutions and professional services are available worldwide through its network of resellers and distributors. For more information, visit www.simplivity.com.

Note: SimpliVity, the SimpliVity logo, OmniCube, OmniStack, and Data Virtualization Platform are trademarks or registered trademarks of SimpliVity Corporation in the United States and certain other countries. All trademarks and registered trademarks mentioned herein belong to their respective owners.

Contacts

SimpliVity Media Contacts

North America

SimpliVity

Melissa Mahoney, 508-720-8227

Vice President, Communications

melissa.mahoney@simplivity.com

or

Version 2.0 Communications

Katelyn Holbrook, 617-426-2222

kholbrook@v2comms.com

or

EMEA

Axicom

Robin Wolstenholme, +44 (0)208 3924079

robin.wolstenholme@axicom.com

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