SAN JOSE, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 02/07/13 -- Nimble Storage, the leading provider of flash-optimized hybrid storage solutions, today announced that the company surpassed a $100 million run rate in bookings in the fourth quarter of its fiscal year ending January 31, 2013, after just two-and-a-half years of commercially shipping its products. In addition to achieving annual sales growth of over 400 percent, Nimble has quadrupled its number of customers, surpassing the 1,100 mark, and has shipped more than 2,000 systems to date. The company also has significantly increased its global reach by expanding its presence in Europe and entering the Asia Pacific region with a presence in Australia and Singapore. Global employee headcount is now over 340, with substantial investments made in sales, engineering and operations personnel.

"This was a significant milestone for us in both sales and customer momentum," said Suresh Vasudevan, CEO of Nimble Storage. "Our customers have validated the growing demand for hybrid flash storage arrays and the strength of Nimble Storage's position against large incumbent vendors. Our founding premise, and the philosophy that every Nimble employee has held from the very beginning, is that we have the potential to build the next great storage company. Following that belief, Nimble has built not only groundbreaking products but also the infrastructure and sales funnel needed to deliver on its mission to make the world's most efficient data storage solution for enterprises."

Product Innovations

Nimble Storage has changed the game in the data storage industry by developing an integrated flash-optimized storage architecture designed expressly to leverage the best of flash performance and the price/capacity of high-capacity hard disk drives. Nimble Storage's scale-to-fit technology, built on the groundbreaking Cache Accelerated Sequential Layout (CASL) architecture, provides customers optimal efficiency for managing their storage performance, capacity and scalability.

During the last year, Nimble Storage expanded its product line, added technology innovations and increased its industry partnerships:

• Products
  • With more than 2,000 storage arrays shipped to date, Nimble Storage has demonstrated the demand for hybrid storage technology.
  • Nimble Storage shipped over 10 petabytes of hybrid flash storage in the last quarter.
  • The CS400 was brought to market to provide an extreme-performance storage array designed to host enterprises' most demanding applications and workloads; it is capable of supporting hundreds of virtual machines or thousands of VDI users on each array.
• Scale-to-Fit
  • The company delivered the industry's first scale-to-fit architecture, which allows customers to protect their investment by enabling them to scale capacity by adding additional storage shelves, to scale performance by upgrading the compute function to achieve greater throughput and IOPS, and to expand cache with larger SSDs to handle more active data. Scale-to-fit provides customers with an unprecedented level of flexibility to scale capacity and/or performance at the lowest incremental cost.
• Industry Partnerships: SmartStack
  • Nimble Storage has developed strategic partnerships with VMware, Cisco and CommVault to provide reference architectures that have been tested for interoperability, performance and fast deployment. Nimble Storage SmartStack for VDI with VMware and Cisco and SmartStack for Data Protection with CommVault meet the high standards of each company to ensure the easiest deployment and highest ROI for joint customers.

"Independent storage companies that reach a $100 million run rate are on a short list within the market, which positions Nimble Storage as a top competitor," said Laura DuBois, program vice president for IDC's Storage Practice. "The demand for I/O-intensive capacity is growing at a compounded rate of over 75 percent annually, and Nimble is poised to take advantage of this exploding market with its hybrid storage architecture."

Awards and Accolades

Nimble Storage received the following industry recognition in 2012:

• The Wall Street Journal's The Next Big Thing: Nimble Storage made this list based on its capital, executive experience and investor know-how, which enable it to succeed and make waves in the storage industry.
• Storage Magazine/SearchStorage Product of the Year Finalist: The Nimble Storage CS400 was named a finalist in the "Enterprise Storage System" category.
• The CRN Emerging Vendor List: The company made the list for the second time; it recognizes the most innovative vendors that not only deliver technology that is easy to use but also can generate high margins for solutions providers.

Customer Adoption

Nimble Storage's success has been fueled by demand from companies worldwide. Customers deploying Nimble Storage solutions have realized significant performance improvements as well as savings driven by reductions in total cost of ownership. Customer growth is consistent across all major vertical industries, including government, education, financial services, legal, healthcare and cloud storage providers. Nimble Storage customers include diverse set of names such as Northamptonshire Police, one of the United Kingdom's largest police force, Mulvanny G2, the #3 worldwide architecture firm, Plaxo, the originator of the smart address book, Kinaxis, a leader in supply chain management, American Association of Petroleum Geologists, Transtar automotive supply, Walton Arts in cultural entertainment, Celina Insurance, and University of Colorado, Boulder.

"I have had a very positive experience with Nimble Storage from start to finish, and continue to be impressed by the momentum the company continues to gain as it grows while maintaining its personal connection to its customers," said Daniel Kwong, Sacramento City College.

Partnerships

Since its inception, Nimble Storage has maintained a channel-centric business model. In 2012 the company increased reseller partnerships over 500 percent and expanded its partners beyond local resellers to include regional, national and international partners. Nimble Storage drives more than 95 percent of its revenue through the channel and in 2012 further increased referral sales and the depth of its alliance technology partnerships. Due to the attractiveness of the Nimble Storage Partner Program and the ease of selling its data storage solutions, Nimble Storage has increased its partner base to more than 400 partners worldwide.

"Nimble Storage's solutions offer customers a secure, reliable and flexible storage architecture that meets the needs of government agencies," said Robert R. Moore, vice president of Carahsoft. "Nimble's flash-optimized hybrid storage solutions offer our sales reps and reseller partners a competitive edge in the market and help us drive sales."

Financial

On Sept. 10, 2012, Nimble Storage received $40.7 million in an over-subscribed mezzanine funding round led by Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners. Existing Nimble investors Lightspeed Venture Partners and Artis Capital Management also participated in the round, and Nimble welcomed GGV Capital as an investor. Nimble Storage will use the funding across its operations, with major emphasis on propelling growth in sales, engineering and international market development. To date, Nimble Storage has raised $98 million.

Additional Resources

• IDC Vendor Watchlist Profile
• Case Studies and Videos
• Case Study: Sacramento City College Solves the Equation for Deploying High-Performance, Cost-Slashing VDI
• Information on CASL
• Alliance Partnerships
• Commentary from Nimble CEO Suresh Vasudevan on second full fiscal year of operations
• Follow Nimble Storage on Twitter: @NimbleStorage
• Join the Nimble Storage Group on LinkedIn
• Visit Nimble Storage channel on YouTube
• Visit Nimble Storage on Facebook

About Nimble Storage
Nimble Storage believes enterprises should not have to compromise on performance, capacity, ease of use, or price. Nimble has developed the first hybrid storage architecture engineered from the ground up to seamlessly integrate flash and high-capacity drives. Our customers enjoy as much as 10x faster application performance, enhanced backup and disaster recovery, and stress-free operations -- all while lowering their TCO. Nimble Storage solutions are available through a global network of world-class channel partners. For more information, visit www.nimblestorage.com and follow us on Twitter: @nimblestorage.

©Nimble Storage and CASL are trademarks or registered trademarks of Nimble Storage. Other trade names or words used in this document are the properties of their respective owners.