DataStax Raises $45 Million in Funding to Fuel International Expansion, Channel Growth and Product Development

PORTLAND OR--(Marketwired - Jul 23, 2013) - OSCON --

• Builds upon customer momentum that includes 20 companies in the Fortune 100, as well as dozens of enterprises migrating from Oracle to Cassandra-based NoSQL solution
  
  
• Continues international expansion which began in EMEA last quarter, investing in the channel, sales and marketing, and developing new products such as DataStax Enterprise 3.1 announced today
  
  
• Advances leadership position in the enterprise NoSQL market, which is set to grow from about $200 million in 2013 to $1 billion in 2017, according to Forrester Research, Inc.¹
  
  

DataStax, the company that powers the online applications that transform business, today announced the completion of a $45 million series D funding round led by Scale Venture Partners with participation from existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, Crosslink Capital and Meritech Capital Partners, and new investors DFJ Growth and Next World Capital. DataStax will use the investment to further its international expansion, channel growth and product development.

"The evolution of enterprise applications and rise of big data has eclipsed traditional database capabilities and provides an opening for a significant new market entrant," said Andy Vitus, partner, Scale Venture Partners. "DataStax is poised to disrupt the traditional RDBMS market and has already demonstrated significant momentum -- signing an enviable list of enterprise customers, expanding into Europe, and unveiling innovative releases that make the product easier to adopt, deploy, and manage. We look forward to working with the team to further accelerate their expansion as they address this large and growing market."

DataStax sells an enterprise-grade NoSQL database that seamlessly and securely integrates real-time data with Apache Cassandra, batch analytics with Apache Hadoop™, enterprise search with Apache Solr™ and visual monitoring and management with OpsCenter. The integration allows enterprises to leverage their hot data in real-time, in the context of their critical business application. DataStax customers include eBay, Netflix, Adobe, Constant Contact and Ooyala, as well as 20 companies within the Fortune 100.

"Our Cassandra-based platform is far and away the best solution for powering online applications that must remain available at all times and scale to tremendous levels," said Billy Bosworth, CEO, DataStax. "Today's funding exceeds all the capital we've received to date, and we will use this investment to accelerate our international expansion, channel growth, sales and marketing and product development while increasing our support for the open-source Cassandra community."

DataStax Unveils New Enterprise Software -- Enables Easier Migration to NoSQL Databases
DataStax also today announced the latest version of its enterprise-grade product, DataStax Enterprise (DSE) 3.1. The new version increases developer ease-of-use to shorten the product development lifecycle and provides greater scalability and simpler manageability. DSE 3.1 provides developers with more powerful tools and easier deployment capabilities by allowing up to 10x more Cassandra data per node than prior versions, featuring Solr 4.3 integration and incorporating the new Cassandra Query Language (CQL) binary protocol with .NET and Java drivers.

DataStax recently announced that dozens of companies have migrated from traditional Oracle relational database management systems (RDBMS) to DataStax, citing scalability, disaster avoidance and cost savings as key criteria. DSE 3.1's comprehensive feature set allows developers accustomed to relational database systems to make a smooth transition to NoSQL technology as they create next-generation applications that relational databases such as Oracle cannot support.

About DataStax
DataStax powers the online applications that transform business for more than 300 customers, including startups and 20 of the Fortune 100. DataStax delivers a massively scalable, flexible and continuously available big data platform built on Apache Cassandra™. DataStax integrates enterprise-ready Cassandra, Apache Hadoop™ for analytics and Apache Solr™ for search across multi-datacenters and in the cloud.

Companies such as Adobe, Healthcare Anytime, eBay and Netflix rely on DataStax to transform their businesses. Based in San Mateo, Calif., DataStax is backed by industry-leading investors: Lightspeed Venture Partners, Crosslink Capital, Meritech Capital Partners, Scale Venture Partners, DFJ Growth and Next World Capital. For more information, visit DataStax or follow us @DataStax.

Supplemental Quotes
"We look for companies that are scaling rapidly and uniquely positioned for category leadership in big markets," said Randy Glein, DFJ Growth Managing Director. "Datastax is leading the way in big data and disrupting traditional approaches to managing and processing information. We are excited to partner with DataStax as they pursue this enormous opportunity."

"At Next World Capital, we see tremendous opportunity for DataStax to continue winning against Oracle and transform the massive database market, particularly with its strong international growth trajectory," said Ben Fu, Partner at Next World Capital. "As an emerging leader in the NoSQL space, our firm will leverage our unique European Advisor Network to maximize DataStax's sales, marketing and overall strategy in the United States, Europe and beyond."

¹ Source: "The Steadily Growing Database Market Is Increasing Enterprises' Choices", June 7, 2013