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AVAMAR RAISES $13 MILLION IN FINANCING LED BY GOLDMAN SACHS

Avamar Technologies Inc, a leading provider of innovative data protection solutions, announced recently that the company has raised $13 million in its largest round of financing to date. The Principal Investment Area of Goldman Sachs led the round with participation from current investors Benchmark Capital, CMGI@Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Avamar will use the funding for general corporate purposes and to expand sales, marketing and support in order to meet the growing demand for disk-based data protection solutions. To date, the company has focused its efforts on the development of its recently introduced disk backup and restore appliance, Axion. With its highly efficient technology, Axion offers the first cost-effective, enterprise solution for fully disk-based data backup, restore and archive.

"Our ability to raise this round of financing from first-tier venture capitalists reflects the confidence of the investment community in both the market opportunity for disk-based data protection solutions and in our market-leading product," said Kevin Daly, CEO of Avamar. "Our revolutionary architecture dramatically changes the data protection and disaster recovery options available to enterprise data centers." Daly added, "The need for high performance and cost effective data protection solutions has never been greater as regulatory requirements and unrelenting data growth continue to increase the need for fast access to protected data."

John Kiang of Goldman Sachs said, "We are excited about Avamar's ability to target the large market opportunity for storage backup and restore solutions. With their unique, software-centric Axion solution, we believe Avamar will leverage the dramatic and continued decrease in the cost of disk storage compared to tape storage and for the first time enable true disk-based backup for the enterprise market."

As part of the round, Lightspeed Venture Partners will join Avamar's board of directors. "We are pleased that our investors recognize the value of the Axion solution and continue to support the Avamar team," Daly said.