DataStax Secures $11 Million in Funding; Driving Apache Cassandra™ Momentum in Real-Time Big Data and Analytics

BURLINGAME, Calif. and NEW YORK, Sept. 21, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- O'Reilly Strata Summit – Today at the O'Reilly Strata Summit, DataStax, the commercial leader in Apache Cassandra™, announced it has closed an $11 million Series B round of financing from new investor Crosslink Capital and previous investor Lightspeed Venture Partners.

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The funds will be utilized to meet the growing global demand for Apache Cassandra, which customers recognize as the best-in-class big data solution for easily managing both real-time and analytic data. DataStax is on track to capture significant market share in the emerging next-generation, distributed data platform market that makes it easy for customers to build, deploy, and operate elastically scalable on-premise and cloud-optimized applications.

"We are pleased that Lightspeed Venture Partners continues to demonstrate their confidence in our success, and we greatly appreciate that Crosslink Capital, known for its superb track record in identifying winning technologies, is now part of our team," said Billy Bosworth, CEO of DataStax. "Crosslink's experience and insight will contribute significantly to the next phase of our growth as we deliver database solutions designed for modern applications that need to deliver mission-critical scalability for both real-time and analytic workloads."

In the last year, DataStax has risen to the ranks of innovator and industry thought-leader through key milestones, including:

• Continued involvement and support of the Apache Cassandra Project, (http://cassandra.apache.org/), including employing its project chair, Jonathan Ellis, DataStax co-founder and CTO
• Key executive announcements, including the appointment of industry veteran Billy Bosworth to Chief Executive Officer
• An increasing enterprise client roster including more than 100 customers spanning verticals including web, telecommunications, media, finance, health care and government

"We are pleased to partner with DataStax and are confident the company's management team is focused and well-positioned for exponential growth and continued leadership in the big data space," said Eric Chin, Partner at Crosslink Capital.  "DataStax's support and innovation with Cassandra is the next evolution in modern data management, and exemplifies our long-standing tradition of investing in innovative portfolio companies and technologies."

In conjunction with the financing, DataStax has added Eric Chin to its Board of Directors.  He is a Partner at Crosslink Capital, with an interest in companies that specialize in digital media and Internet services, as well as software and business services companies. Chin has over 19 years of experience as an entrepreneur and venture capitalist, and is co-founder and president of alpha, the entrepreneurial networking club for more than 400 founders and CEOs. He joined Crosslink Capital in 2010 from Bay Partners, where he was a General Partner.

DataStax today also announced DataStax Enterprise, the industry's first distributed, scalable, and highly-available database platform powered by Apache Cassandra™.

About DataStax

DataStax is the developer of DataStax Enterprise, a distributed, scalable, and highly-available database platform that delivers optimal performance either on premise or in the cloud for modern enterprise applications that manage both real-time and analytic workloads.  The company has over 100 customers, including leaders such as Netflix, Cisco, Rackspace and Constant Contact, and spanning verticals including web, financial services, telecommunications, logistics and government. DataStax is backed by industry leading investors, including Lightspeed Venture Partners and Crosslink Capital and is based in Burlingame, CA with offices in Austin, TX and Stamford, CT. For more information, visit www.datastax.com.

About Apache Cassandra™

Apache Cassandra™ is an open source distributed database management system. It is designed to store and allow very low-latency access to very large amounts of data spread out across many commodity servers while providing a highly-available service with no single point of failure. This next-generation data platform evolved from work at Google, Amazon and Facebook, and is an Apache Software Foundation top-level project.

For more information, visit http://cassandra.apache.org/.

SOURCE DataStax