Proximal Data, a San Diego data storage specialist founded in 2011, says it has raised $2 million in a Series B round led by Seattle’s Divergent Ventures and existing investor Avalon Ventures of San Diego. The round brings total funding for the company to $5 million, according to a statement today.
Proximal is developing software to optimize storage performance for virtual servers, a market crowded with competition. The company unveiled a technology collaboration partnership last summer with Micron Technology (NASDAQ: [[ticker:NU]]), and has been developing its virtual machine technology for use with Micron data storage devices.
Proximal was founded by Rory Bolt, who was the chief technology officer at Irvine, CA-based Avamar Technologies, acquired by EMC (NYSE: [[ticker:EMC]]) in 2006 for $165 million. He also has worked as a technical director at NetApp, and as a distinguished fellow at Quantum. He was a founder of @Backup and was project manager at Stac Electronics.
Proximal’s approach inserts its intelligent “virtual cache” software in the virtual machine software, without requiring special-purpose storage devices or operating system agents.
The company has been expanding in Europe, and plans to use proceeds of the venture round to increase its sales and distribution channel and to further advance its virtual cache technology.
Author: Bruce V. Bigelow
In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here.
Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.
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