Rubrik rolls out Firefly update, raises $61M in Series C funding

Cloud data management platform, Rubrik that provides data protection, analytics, compliance and copy data management to hybrid cloud enterprises, raised $61 million in a Series C funding round, as it announced the launch of Rubrik Firefly to advance its product offerings as a service. Based in Palo Alto, California, Rubrik aims at helping companies leverage the public cloud services for simplified data management across workloads. According to the company, Firefly embraces physical workloads and extends to edge environments like remote or branch offices after packing its software in a virtual appliance. This will potentially allow enterprises with remote or branch offices to deploy a Rubrik instance at each location (working ways with main office) without fearing data replication hassles. Reportedly, it is a single software fabric spanning private, hybrid and public clouds which delivers mission critical data management functions including backup and recovery, disaster recovery and data archiving. Other benefits include Microsoft SQL server protection with a single service level agreement policy engine to automate SQL server data management, deliver application consistent and point-in-time recovery (PITR) with log management. It also claims to enables easy protection for physical Linux servers by enabling policy driven while providing global predictive search for instant access to file versions across clouds. However its initial cloud offering is limited to Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure integration.   Arvind Nithrakashyap, Co-founder and CTO, said:

“The Firefly release demonstrates the breadth and depth of our vision to deliver complete data management, across platforms and application types. Rubrik allows enterprises to manage all their data with groundbreaking simplicity and velocity while blending in public cloud to drive business innovation.”

Amongst other features Rubrik Firefly also claims to provide:

• Instant Access – It delivers instant application recovery and predictive global search by unifying data locked within disparate application silos into one globally indexed namespace while leveraging zero-data cloning technology to enable on-demand copy data workflows.
• Automated Orchestration –It nearly eliminates daily operational management by enabling a single policy engine to orchestrate service level agreements across the entire data lifecycle. The Rubrik programmatic interface automates how data services are created, consumed, and retired across clouds.
• Security and Compliance – It also secures data whether in-flight or at-rest throughout its lifecycle, regardless of location. Also, delivers granular user provisioning and data permissions across all cloud data management workflows while providing automated compliance reporting to successfully complete various industry and internal audits.

The cushion of extra funds

Meanwhile, the $61 million Series C investment was led by Khosla Ventures with participation from investors like Lightspeed Venture Partners, Greylock Partners and already existing angel investors. Rubrik claims to have a total funding of over $112 million till date, which it hopes will help the company accelerate the “disruption of $48 billion legacy data management market” and continue product development with better sales and marketing support. Vinod Khosla, Founder, Khosla Ventures, believes there is an universal need for a data management platform that can orchestrate data across private and public clouds. He stated, “Just as Sun Microsystems ushered an era of client-server computing, Rubrik pioneers a cloud data management architecture that will fundamentally transform how enterprises manage and access their application data. Rubrik’s swift rise and unparalleled momentum demonstrate a massive market opportunity for such a cloud-enabled transformation.” Founded in the year 2014, Rubrik shares market competition with other similar data technology service providers like EMC, Commvault and NetApp. Prior to this, earlier in May 2015, it had raised $41 million in Series B funding from Greylock Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Bipul Sinha, Co-founder and CEO, Rubrik, added:

“With organizations increasingly looking to leverage public cloud, Rubrik delivers the killer application to democratize public cloud for enterprises with an easy button to protect, manage, and secure data everywhere. Our Firefly release will further accelerate cloud adoption in enterprises, and cement cloud data management as an industry standard practice.”