Features - Financial Plays Of The Week:

PolyServe SECURES $20 MILLION IN SERIES D FUNDING

PolyServe Inc, a supplier of server and storage clustering software for the enterprise data center, announced it has secured $20 million in a Series D funding round led by Fidelity Ventures. Fidelity Ventures was joined in the round by PolyServe's existing investors, including Greylock, New Enterprise Associates and the RODA Group.

"PolyServe welcomes the domain expertise and global relationship network of Fidelity Ventures," said Mike Stankey, president and CEO of PolyServe. "We'll use this latest funding to aggressively accelerate our sales efforts, fully capitalizing on our unique position in the marketplace and leveraging our customer and technical proof points. With this investment, we have built a significant operating cushion that will sustain us well beyond profitability and allow us to fully fund strategic initiatives that we could not otherwise pursue."

"PolyServe is well positioned to become a leader in enabling the next generation of storage architectures for the enterprise data center," said Dave Power, partner at Fidelity Ventures. "We see a solid opportunity to assist PolyServe with its go-to-market strategy, and to help the company leverage Fidelity's world-class IT organization as a design partner."

The funding comes as PolyServe continues to increase and solidify its presence in enterprise data centers:

• Expanding into Windows: Already a leader in clustering software for the Linux commercial enterprise, the company this spring launched Matrix Server for Windows, a first-of-its-kind shared data cluster software product for the Microsoft operating system.
• Storage Success: Also this spring, PolyServe redefined the price/performance standard in the $1.3 billion market for networked-attached storage (NAS) with the introduction of the PolyServe NAS Cluster solution. The solution integrates PolyServe clustering software with low-cost, industry-standard servers and storage to far surpass popular NAS appliances in maximum file-serving performance. A comparably configured PolyServe NAS Cluster is priced at less than 20 percent of the cost of a representative clustered pair of NAS appliances.
• Broad Customer Adoption: PolyServe's Linux and Windows solutions are now in use among more than 300 customers worldwide. Companies such as Wells Fargo Bank, Burlington Coat Factory and Amerada Hess rely on the PolyServe Matrix Server software to create highly available, shared data clusters for database, file serving, Web serving and other mission-critical applications.
• World-Class Partners and Channel: In support of its Windows product launch, PolyServe announced alliances with Microsoft and HP. In addition, Dell is a reseller of PolyServe Matrix Server software. Also, since its previous round of financing PolyServe has grown its sales and distribution channel to include more than 45 channel partners, including distributors Agilysys and Avnet.

About PolyServe

PolyServe Inc is a developer of shared data clustering software for Linux and Microsoft Windows mission-critical data centers. The company's products reduce the cost and complexity associated with traditional clustering approaches, while offering superior scalability, availability and manageability. In addition to its headquarters in Beaverton, Ore., PolyServe has a Microsoft development center in Redmond, Wash. It also has sales and support offices in Atlanta; Austin, Texas; Boston; Chicago; Minneapolis; New York; Washington, D.C.; and San Francisco. For more information about PolyServe, visit www.polyserve.com, or call (877) 476-5973.