ClusterHQ Secures $12M Series A Funding to Expand Leadership in Providing Data Solutions for the Docker and Container Ecosystem

SILICON VALLEY, Calif., Feb. 5, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- ClusterHQ™, The Container Data People™, today announced a $12 million Series A funding round led by Accel Partners London, with participation from Canaan Partners as well as existing investors. ClusterHQ will use the funds to expand technical and go-to-market resources to help organizations use containers in production. The funding represents the largest Series A investment in the container ecosystem to date.

With five years' experience solving data problems for container-based applications, ClusterHQ is the company behind Flocker, the popular open-source project for containerizing stateful services – for example, the databases, queues and key-value stores that underpin modern microservices architectures. Flocker lets organizations run their data-backed services in containers without losing the operational management features that they've enjoyed with virtual machines for the past decade.  

Containers have taken enterprise IT by storm in recent months, for example Docker's container platform went from under three million downloads in June 2014 to over one-hundred million by January 2015.  Fueling the next level of growth means providing tools for managing stateful services such as databases, which are at the heart of most applications. ClusterHQ will address the essential operational requirements of enterprise IT – high availability, disaster recovery, failover, live migration and backup for these services.

"Having closely followed the evolving needs of enterprise IT organizations, we believe that enterprise adoption of container technology will be greatly accelerated when containerization offers the same data management and protection solutions that enterprise IT organizations have come to expect from virtualization," said Kevin Comolli, Partner at Accel Partners, who is be joining the company's board of directors. "ClusterHQ is uniquely positioned to deliver these solutions, modernized for a container-based world."

ClusterHQ recently added storage industry veteran and serial entrepreneur Mark Davis as CEO to help drive its leadership in the market for managing stateful containers.

"As an investor in Mark's previous company, from its founding through the strategic acquisition by VMware, Canaan Partners has seen the enormous value created by flexible storage for modern applications," said Maha Ibrahim, General Partner at Canaan Partners. "We are excited to support ClusterHQ as it delivers powerful enterprise storage into the new world of containers, DevOps and microservices."

Taking advantage of the Silicon Valley and global networks of Accel Partners and Canaan Partners, Davis will expand ClusterHQ's San Francisco Bay Area headquarters to complement the company's UK-based development team.  

"ClusterHQ's heavily oversubscribed Series A is an enthusiastic endorsement of the enormous opportunity to provide solutions for stateful container-based applications," Davis stated.  "In and around the company, the excitement is high about our work on the data layer for applications based on the Docker platform. With this capital infusion from our powerful syndicate of investor partners, ClusterHQ will expand its role in the container ecosystem."

Additional Resources:
ClusterHQ raises $12 million Series A from Accel Partners & Canaan Partners to build data layer for Docker: http://clusterhq.com/blog/series-a-funding/
Data-focused Docker Clustering: clusterhq.com/blog/data-focused-docker-clustering/
Flocker on Github:github.com/ClusterHQ/flocker

Notes to editors:

Mark Davis
ClusterHQ recently added storage industry veteran and serial entrepreneur Mark Davis as CEO. Davis' many startup and early-stage successes include co-founding Virsto Software, an early leader in the software-defined storage market. At Virsto he led the company through three rounds of venture capital funding and its high-value acquisition by VMware in 2013.

Davis, a data center software specialist, previously served as CEO of Creekpath Systems through its acquisition by Opsware (now HP), and held positions as vice president at several startups including Evolve Software, where he was key to a successful IPO, and ConvergeNet Technologies, where he was instrumental in its $340M acquisition by Dell. He serves as a board member, advisor and investor in startups the world over.

About ClusterHQ™

As The Container Data People™, ClusterHQ is the company behind the container industry's first solution for reliably running databases, key-value stores and queues inside Docker containers. Through its innovative open-source data volume and container manager, Flocker, ClusterHQ delivers a platform for solving the significant operational challenges that come from running data-backed services inside containers. ClusterHQ team members are technical experts in storage, networking and containers who have successfully driven open source adoption in developer-led communities. ClusterHQ is backed by the top-tier investors Accel Partners and Canaan Partners. clusterhq.com

About Accel Partners

Founded in 1983, Accel Partners has a long history of partnering with outstanding entrepreneurs and management teams to build world-class businesses. Accel today invests globally using dedicated teams and market-specific strategies for local geographies, with offices in Palo Alto, New York City, London and Bangalore.

Accel has helped entrepreneurs build over 300 successful companies, many of which have defined their categories, including Alfresco, Angry Birds (Rovio), Atlassian, Cloudera, ComScore, Dropbox, Facebook, Gameforge, Groupon, Imperva, Kayak, Nimble Storage, Playfish, QlikTech, Spotify, Supercell and Varonis.

For more information, please visit the Accel Partners web site at www.accel.com.   Find us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/accel.

About Canaan Partners

For nearly 30 years, Canaan Partners has been investing in entrepreneurs with visionary ideas to improve the way we live our lives. With over $4.2 billion under management and more than 160 exits to date, Canaan has funded some of the world's most innovative companies in technology including Ebates, Kabam, Lending Club, and Skybox Imaging, as well as healthcare leaders such as Arvinas, Civitas Therapeutics, Durata Therapeutics, Labrys Biologics and Truveris. Headquartered in Menlo Park, California, Canaan also has offices in New York City, New York and Westport, Connecticut. For more information, visit us at www.canaan.com and follow us on Twitter @canaanpartners.

SOURCE ClusterHQ