US-based data centre technology developer DriveScale emerged out of stealth mode on Tuesday with a $15m series A round backed by computing company Ingrasys, a subsidiary of contract manufacturing company Foxconn.
Pelion Venture Partners and Nautilus Venture Partners also invested in the round. Ingrasys’ investment comes as part of a hardware equipment supplier agreement with DriveScale, announced separately the same day. Ingrasys co-developed DriveScale’s hardware products.
Founded in 2013, DriveScale has created a platform that combines software-as-a-service with hardware to make data centres more easily scalable. The platform takes advantage of Apache Hadoop, an open-source technology that enables distributed data storage and processing.
Carl Ledbetter, managing director at Pelion, and Connie Sheng, founding managing director at Nautilus, will join DriveScale’s board of directors.
Scott McNealy, co-founder of technology company Sun Microsystems; James Gosling, developer of programming language Java; Phil Roussey, co-founder of storage and computing technology distributor Bell Microsystems; and Ameet Patel, senior advisor at TPG Growth, have been appointed to the advisory board.
DriveScale previously received angel funding from Ingrasys, though further details have not been revealed.
Gene Banman, chief executive of DriveScale, said: “DriveScale’s partnership with the world’s leading outsourced manufacturing company in this era of computer commoditisation is a major coup.
“It will allow us to grow our products and services quickly, knowing that we can maintain the highest level of manufacturing quality no matter how fast we grow.”