Nexenta secures $24 mn fund, appoints new CEO, CMO

BANGALORE, INDIA: Software-defined storage player Nexenta Systems has secured $24 million in Series D financing. The company announced the appointment of Mark Lockareff as chief executive officer, with former CEO Evan Powell assuming the new role of chief strategy officer. Moreover, it has also appointed Bridget Warwick as chief marketing officer.

"Nexenta provides the ideal storage to support Hosting.com's cloud hosting services and our customers' mission-critical applications. No other technology can match Nexenta's price-to-performance, which has helped us offer competitive and differentiated services to companies all over the world. We look forward to a long and mutually beneficial relationship between our two companies," said Hosting.com CTO Matt Ferrari.

Nexenta's Series D financing is led by new investor Four Rivers Group, with participation by existing investors Menlo Ventures, TransLink Capital, Javelin Ventures, Sierra Ventures, Razor's Edge Ventures, and West Summit Capital. In addition to Four Rivers, new strategic investors Presidio Ventures and UMC Capital participated.

Warwick previously held senior marketing positions at BlueArc Corporation (acquired by Hitachi Data Systems) and NetApp. These strategic additions to the executive team follow the October 2012 appointment of Rick Martig as CFO, and reflect Nexenta's transition from a disruptive and explosive start-up to the trusted and innovative storage partner for thousands of companies all over the world.

With 25 years' experience, Mark Lockareff will drive Nexenta's next stage of growth as software-defined storage rapidly changes the dynamics of the IT technology market, says a statement from the company. He has led or invested in a number of enterprise infrastructure, software and internet companies during their key growth stages including: ParAccel, Agiliance, Softricity, Model N, Riverbed, Acopia, ProofPoint, and Facebook.

"Our task at Nexenta is simple: we must build a company that is up to meeting the enormous opportunity of leading the transformation of the storage industry. The transition to Software-defined Storage is accelerating because customers must have greater flexibility, performance, and savings in their storage if they are to compete. I'm confident that Mark and Bridget will help us do an even better job for our customers, resellers, and strategic partners," said Powell.