MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 01/18/13 -- Gridstore™, the leader in software defined storage solutions, today announced significant momentum for 2012, surpassing company expectations across all operational areas as it successfully delivers on the promise of software defined storage. For Gridstore, 2012 was marked by a number of milestones including rapid customer adoption, the launch of an expanded partner ecosystem, the attraction of fresh funding in October 2012, and a growing portfolio of industry accolades and awards.

As businesses of all sizes suffer from the explosion of data growth, Gridstore is meeting data influx needs that monolithic legacy architectures have not been able to solve. As the first to market with an advanced software-defined, scale-out storage platform, Gridstore's solution is able to scale as a business' data needs scale, without over-provisioning or wasting capacity. Gridstore's flagship product, The Grid™ revolutionizes the way storage is managed and seamlessly integrated into existing environments. It delivers scalability, performance and cost-efficiency to support unmet storage demands in big data, cloud and virtualized environments.

"The proliferation of data across companies of all sizes is increasing the complexity of maintenance, data protection, and availability for IT departments. The mid-market feels the pressures of these issues most and therefore demands a storage infrastructure that is aligned to solve these challenges," said Amita Potnis, senior research analyst, storage systems for IDC. "Gridstore's scale-out storage solution called the Grid is specifically designed for the mid-market that is suffering from influx of data and can no longer scale using traditional storage."

As it successfully responds to the needs of the mid-tier market for dynamically scalable storage, Gridstore achieved the following company milestones during 2012:

• Closed $12.5 million in Series A financing, in October 2012, in a round led by GGV Capital and Onset Ventures. The new funding has been leveraged to expand the company's sales channels and to accelerate the delivery of grid-based, scale-out storage.
• Named former Drobo CEO and BlueArc Founder, Geoff Barrall, as executive chairman of the board. The storage-industry veteran and visionary brings decades of insight and leadership to Gridstore as it works to build highly successful new market opportunities.
• Launched the Gridstore Accelerate Partner Program with attractive channel incentives to empower channel partners to deliver simple, powerful and affordable storage solutions to today's mid-size enterprises.
• Named technology industry veteran, Chris Sterbenc, as vice president of sales to oversee the company's sales channel expansion as it embarks on the next wave of its growth strategy.

Gridstore has also been recognized with the following industry accolades and awards during 2012:

• Won the 2012 Cloud Computing Excellence Award from TMC, as published in the January 2012 issue of Cloud Computing Magazine.
• Selected as a 2012 Red Herring Top 100 Global Award recipient which recognizes leading private companies and celebrates startup innovation and technologies across their respective industries.
• Secured a "Bronze" placement in the Storage Systems category for the 2011 Products of the Year presented by the editors of TechTarget's Storage Media Group, including Storage Magazine and SearchStorage.com.
• Recognized as one of "The 10 Coolest Startups of 2012" by CRN Magazine, ranking No. 6 on the list of what the article calls "groundbreaking" startups.
• Named a "Hot Storage Startup" by Enterprise Storage Forum.

"Our significant performance throughout 2012 is continued proof that our approach to scalable, high performance storage is distinctly positioned to change the game for today's storage paradigm," said Kelly Murphy, CEO, Gridstore. "In 2013, you will see Software Defined Storage emerge as the ideal architecture for the virtualized data center. And, as a result, customers will be able to benefit from the best possible price/performance combination with the flexibility and simplicity that is not possible with the monolithic storage solutions of yesterday."

News: @Gridstore achieves significant milestones as it delivers on the promise of software defined storage

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About Gridstore
Gridstore is the leading provider of software defined storage that turns simple storage building blocks into the world's most powerful and affordable storage without limits. Gridstore brings the era of mainframe-style monolithic storage and its disruptive forklift upgrades to an end. The Grid allows businesses to start small and pay as they grow to any size while growing more powerful with each additional block. We eliminate the frustrations of planning and forecasting for the unknown. No more headaches, no more disruption to the business. Now you can effortlessly give your organization the powerful storage it demands. Gridstore is headquartered in Mountain View, Calif. For more information, please visit: http://www.gridstore.com.