Schooner Information Technology Raises $20 Million in Second-Round Funding to Fuel Worldwide Distribution of Groundbreaking Data Access Appliances
Funding Comes after Initial Success Supplying Schooner Appliances to Information-Intensive Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing Datacenters
MENLO PARK, Calif., July 27, 2009 — Schooner Information Technology, Inc., a provider of data access appliances for information-intensive Web 2.0 and cloud computing datacenters, today announced it has secured $20 million in Series B financing. The funding round, led by Menlo Ventures, will allow Schooner to further develop its datacenter technology and expand its worldwide distribution activities to meet market demand. Series A investors CMEA Capital and Redpoint Ventures have returned to participate in this Series B round as well.
The funding comes on the heels of Schooner's initial market success in the launch of its first two products-the Schooner Appliance for MySQL Enterprise™ and the Schooner Appliance for Memcached-in April 2009. Schooner provides state-of-the-art data access appliances that deliver eight times higher performance and reduce costs by more than 60 percent versus existing datacenter solutions.
Today's Web 2.0 and cloud computing datacenters are struggling to keep pace with rising costs, workloads and data complexity. Schooner's appliances address these challenges by leveraging breakthroughs in flash memory and multi-core processors, and by providing a level of integration unavailable in competitive technologies.
"At Menlo Ventures, we've looked at many companies in this space, and we have a fundamental belief in Schooner's approach to solving today's IT challenges," said Mark Siegel, managing director, Menlo Ventures. "Schooner's products fulfill a critical need for Web 2.0 and cloud computing datacenters: the ability to take advantage of new technologies in order to massively scale to meet demand."
Siegel continued, "The new datacenter paradigm results in an important emerging growth sector in technology. At the same time, the economic environment favors solutions like Schooner appliances because they enable IT management to better support services-whether Web 2.0, cloud computing or even corporate datacenters-while facing highly constrained IT budgets."
"This funding comes directly after our successful launch and further validates the Schooner approach to resolving today's datacenter challenges," said Dr. John Busch, president and chief executive officer of Schooner. "The funding enables us to further expand our product development activities while continuing to service our existing customer base."
Schooner has also expanded its executive leadership, adding Mark Lohmeyer, a product development and management veteran from Symantec Corporation (formerly VERITAS Software), to the team. As vice president of products, Lohmeyer will lead product strategy, marketing and engineering to support the expansion of Schooner's innovative product portfolio. During his time at Symantec, Lohmeyer led his team across the U.S., India and China, driving over $300 million in revenue worldwide.