Qumulo

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Qumulo
Company typePrivately held company
IndustryData storage
FoundedMarch 2012; 12 years ago (2012-03)
Founders
  • Peter Godman
  • Aaron Passey
  • Neal Fachan
Headquarters,
U.S.
Key people
Bill Richter (CEO)
ProductsDistributed file systems
Websitequmulo.com

Qumulo is an American data storage company based in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 2012, it offers products and services to help other companies manage and curate large amounts of data.

History[edit]

Qumulo was founded in March 2012 by Neal Fachan, Peter Godman, and Aaron Passey. They all previously worked at Isilon, a storage platform that was acquired by EMC.[1][2] Several of Qumulo's key employees are also former Isilon employees.[3][4][5]

The company received $2.3-million seed funding from investment company Valhalla Partners.[6][7] In November 2012, it secured an additional $24.5 million from a Series A round led by Highland Capital Partners.[2][7] By the end of its first year, the company had raised a total of $26.8 million while releasing few details about its possible product offering.[1][2]

After an 18-month development period in 2013–2014, Qumulo began selling its products in August 2014.[8][9] Six months after its product release, the company announced completion of a $40-million funding series led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.[5][8] Before entering the development period, Qumulo employed 18 people[2][7] which increased to 90 by February 2015[8][4] and to 150 employees in January 2016.[10]

The company remained secretive about its product offering until March 2015,[11] when it finally offered specific details of its software, describing it as a "data aware" storage system.[9] This was followed by a $32.5-million funding series in June 2016 adding new investor Allen & Company.[12][13] However, the company's share price had dropped by more than 35% when compared to previous rounds and the funds generated were below the company's expectations.[14]

In November 2016, Qumulo hired Bill Richter to succeed Godman as CEO.[12][15] Godman continued as CTO until the end of 2018.[16] Qumulo raised $30 million additional funds in April 2017 and $93 million in June 2018, bringing it total funding to $230 million.[17][18] In January 2019, the company opened offices in Vancouver, Canada.[19] It employs approximately 220 people as of April 2019.[20] Citing economic conditions and getting the company to profitability, on June 29, 2022 Qumulo laid off 80 employees, approximately 19% of its workforce.[21] Aaron Passey, who helped launch Qumulo back in 2012, returned to the Seattle-based data management company in 2022.[22]

Products[edit]

Qumulo develops storage software for file-based data.[3][4][9] The file system software can be deployed with on-premise data centers on Qumulo's network-attached storage hardware, as well as on Hewlett Packard Enterprise Apollo and Dell PowerEdge R740xd platforms.[23][24] It can also be used on the cloud storage platforms Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform.[25][26]

In September 2018, the firm announced an update to its software adding machine learning-powered pre-fetch to anticipate which files the user will most likely access next. The software preemptively caches files identified by analyzing user behavior and patterns in file access.[27][28]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b "With wind at their backs, Seattle startups ride cloud of innovation". The Seattle Times. 2012-12-03. Retrieved 2019-06-19.
  2. ^ a b c d Gage, Deborah (2012-11-20). "Stealthy Qumulo Raises $24.5M for Enterprise Data Storage". WSJ. Retrieved 2019-06-19.
  3. ^ a b "Stealthy enterprise data storage startup Qumulo raises $40M, adds Isilon founder to board". GeekWire. 2015-02-04. Retrieved 2019-06-19.
  4. ^ a b c Gage, Deborah (2015-02-04). "Qumulo Packs Up $40M for Intelligent Storage". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2019-06-19.
  5. ^ a b Mellor, Chris (4 Feb 2015). "Isilon brains trust flock to data-tastic upstart Qumulo". www.theregister.co.uk. Retrieved 2019-06-19.
  6. ^ "Enterprise data storage startup Qumulo raising more cash". GeekWire. 2016-06-01. Retrieved 2019-06-19.
  7. ^ a b c Dudley, Brier. "Storage startup Qumulo raises $24.5 million". The Seattle Times. Retrieved 2019-06-19.
  8. ^ a b c Dudley, Brier. "Data-storage startup Qumulo raises $40 million". The Seattle Times. Retrieved 2019-06-19.
  9. ^ a b c "Storage startup Qumulo opens the kimono". The Seattle Times. 2015-03-16. Retrieved 2019-06-19.
  10. ^ "Tech startups working hard to sell culture that job hunters will buy into". The Seattle Times. 2016-01-30. Retrieved 2019-06-19.
  11. ^ "Fresh off a $40M funding round, data storage startup Qumulo comes out of stealth mode". GeekWire. 2015-03-16. Retrieved 2019-06-19.
  12. ^ a b "Former Isilon executive Bill Richter named CEO of Qumulo, says new job was a 'no brainer'". GeekWire. 2016-11-29. Retrieved 2019-06-19.
  13. ^ "Qumulo raises $32.5M, pushing total funding to $100 million". The Seattle Times. 2016-06-02. Retrieved 2019-06-19.
  14. ^ Gage, Deborah (2016-06-02). "Storage Analytics Startup Qumulo Raises $32.5M in 'Down' Round". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2019-06-19.
  15. ^ Mellor, Chris (30 Nov 2016). "Qumulo gets head transplant". www.theregister.co.uk. Retrieved 2019-06-19.
  16. ^ "Qumulo co-founder and CTO Peter Godman has left the company". GeekWire. 2018-11-08. Retrieved 2019-06-19.
  17. ^ "Qumulo raises $93M to tackle hybrid cloud file storage, total funding now $230M". GeekWire. 2018-06-06. Retrieved 2019-06-19.
  18. ^ Lerman, Rachel (2018-06-06). "Seattle startup Qumulo pulls in $93 million investment". The Seattle Times. Retrieved 2019-06-19.
  19. ^ Semuels, Alana (July 25, 2019). "Tech Companies Are Flocking to Canada for High-Skilled Foreign Workers". Time. Retrieved 2019-12-27.
  20. ^ Bick, Carolyn (Apr 29, 2019). "Qumulo CEO believes 'you can't have a functioning society without data'". www.bizjournals.com. Retrieved 2019-06-19.
  21. ^ "Seattle startup Qumulo lays off 80 employees, CEO cites economic conditions and reaching profitability". GeekWire. 2022-06-29. Retrieved 2022-06-29.
  22. ^ Soper, Taylor (2022-12-13). "Tech Moves: Qumulo co-founder returns; Allen Institute adds execs; and more". GeekWire. Retrieved 2023-03-22.
  23. ^ "Qumulo unveils next generation of its file storage system, now available on Amazon Web Services". GeekWire. 2017-09-19. Retrieved 2019-06-19.
  24. ^ Mellor, Chris (15 Aug 2018). "What the Dell? Qumulo slips into PowerEdge servers". www.theregister.co.uk. Retrieved 2019-06-19.
  25. ^ "Stealthy Seattle Storage Startup Qumulo Snags $40M Investment". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2019-06-19.
  26. ^ Mellor, Chris (5 Apr 2019). "Hard, er, Core: Qumulo dropkicks scale-out storage software at Google's cloud". www.theregister.co.uk. Retrieved 2019-06-19.
  27. ^ Mellor, Chris (14 Sep 2018). "The quickening: Qumulo speed with software boost for new kit". www.theregister.co.uk. Retrieved 2019-06-19.
  28. ^ Bass, Dina (2015-04-02). "Seattle: Kurt Cobain, Coffee, Data Storage". www.bloomberg.com. Retrieved 2019-06-19.

External links[edit]