Today Qumulo announced a $125M fundraise at a $1.2B valuation, which represents a strong validation of our business, and provides significant fuel for Qumulo to double down on our R&D investments and accelerate our global expansion. Many people have asked me how we have continued to grow despite a global pandemic, an economic downturn, and a radically different way of living and working. So, I wanted to pull back the covers a bit and share why I believe our company is thriving at a time that so many are not.
Qumulo’s business has always been underpinned by two industry mega-trends that are defining our world – the unrelenting proliferation of digital content (file-based data) and the rise of cloud computing. We are seeing a huge acceleration of both of these phenomena as organizations across the world respond to current challenges by seeking new ways to innovate.
Though we don’t often stop to think about it, our lives have become defined by file data.
Movies, medicine, education, energy, research, and autonomous vehicles are all made possible through the capture and transformation of file data. Researchers capture genomes from sequencers and transform them into drug therapies. Manufacturers capture log files from factory floors and transform them into machine learning models to improve output. Airplanes capture geographic images and transform them into immersive maps which inform disaster response. Filmmakers capture video which artists transform into blockbuster productions. All of these examples, and many more, are at the center of the modern human experience, and they all leverage file-based data.
While you may have heard of “big data” in the past, the data sets I’m referring to, and that Qumulo is built to manage, are very, VERY big.
How big? Our customers on average generate more than a petabyte of data. For context, think of an HD movie that would take 13 YEARS to watch – that’s one petabyte of data. Complicating things, our customers don’t just generate one large file, instead they often create many billions of them of all shapes and sizes.
Freeing applications, and the users that depend on vast amounts of file data, is what we live for here at Qumulo. As the world continues to digitize everything and as file data becomes an increasingly important part of entertainment, innovation, and human health, Qumulo will be out in front to clear the path.
Historically, the legacy industry initially tried to address the file data challenge by selling their customers vast amounts of proprietary hardware.
At the time, that was the only available solution. But with the advent of cloud computing and through the power of software, we now have the ability to service these enterprise applications – and the large file data sets they generate – in a completely new way. Qumulo recognized early on that the cloud and the concept of treating infrastructure as software could revolutionize the way developers build and manage their file data-intensive applications across private and public clouds.
At the heart of this sea change is the disruptive potential of the public cloud to offer organizations limitless elastic computing resources, powerful AI services, and the ability to reach a global audience with just a few clicks.
To take advantage of that disruptive potential, organizations must be able to power applications with this new world of digitized content, both in their data centers and in the public cloud of their choice. Qumulo recognized a simple truth from early on in the life of our products: customers need a great file platform that spans those two operating environments well. We have long seen this as an opportunity to further our customers’ innovation by offering the flexibility to serve applications in the place that makes most sense to their business.
Today’s funding announcement might appear like Qumulo was simply in the right place at the right time. I suppose that’s true to an extent. But what’s really happening goes much deeper than that. Today’s news is just the latest manifestation of our team’s disciplined, relentless focus on innovation that started many years ago with customers as our true North Star.
We saw an important problem and addressed it. We love data and the things it can do for humanity. We take issue with the clunky and cumbersome legacy ways of doing things. Qumulo exists for one reason: to offer customers the capability, choice, and freedom to unleash the power of their file data.
Based on the delight we hear from those customers and the validation of today’s funding announcement, it appears that we’re onto something truly special. This strong reception from investors is a direct result of our bold mission, our ability to execute, and the substantial and groundbreaking work our amazing Qumulons have done! Your contributions and hard work are very much appreciated. Thank You!
And to the most important audience of all – our customers – I want to assure you that today is only the beginning of what you can expect from Qumulo.Thank you for being part of our journey. The best is yet to come!
