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Piston Cloud Closes $8 Million in Series B Funding to Accelerate OpenStack Adoption

OpenStack Pioneer's Unique Technology Attracts Investments From Cisco, Data Collective, Divergent Ventures, Hummer Winblad, Swisscom Ventures and True Ventures

SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 02/05/13 -- Piston Cloud Computing, Inc., the enterprise OpenStack™ company, today announced it has raised $8 million in Series B funding. The investment will be used to fuel product development, meet the needs of Piston Cloud's rapidly expanding customer base and further deliver on the company's vision for mass adoption of OpenStack. Cisco Systems Inc., Data Collective and Swisscom Ventures join Divergent Ventures, Hummer Winblad and True Ventures as principal investors.

Corporate Milestones

  • Today's $8 million in Series B financing follows a $4.5 million Series A round in July 2011.
  • Launched the first commercial OpenStack distribution with the general availability of the company's flagship solution, Piston Enterprise OpenStack™, software for building, scaling and managing a private Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud on bare-metal, converged commodity hardware.
  • Integration with Cloud Foundry™, the leading open source Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering, that allows Cloud Foundry PaaS to run on OpenStack.
  • Support for the three leading automation solutions, Opscode™, Puppet Labs™ and RightScale®, enabling Piston Cloud's customers to easily automate the tasks necessary to manage applications within their private clouds.
  • Introduction of the first commercially available Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) solution built on OpenStack, via an exclusive licensing agreement with Gridcentric, the virtualization optimization company.
  • Appointment of new CEO, Jim Morrisroe, to drive continued company growth and product development.
  • Industry recognition including a Best of VMworld 2012 Gold Award for Private Cloud Computing, inclusion in the 2012 AlwaysOn Top 100 and Global 250 lists, named a 2012 Cloud Computing World Series finalist and swept three Under the Radar award categories, including Judge's Choice, Best in Show and the Audience Choice Award.

Supporting Quotes
"Our investors' confidence in Piston Cloud validates our strategy and the pioneering work we have done over the last two plus years in the OpenStack community. This new investment will enable us to build on this foundation and to accelerate our growth as we work to enhance our products, grow our customer base and establish new partnerships."
-Jim Morrisroe, CEO, Piston Cloud, Inc.

"We evaluated a number of opportunities in the OpenStack market, and expect to see continued growth and widespread adoption in the coming years. After extensive strategic industry analysis, we identified Piston Cloud as having the resources, pedigree and proven technology platform to capture the lion's share of this growing market."
-Matt Ocko, Co-Managing Partner, Data Collective

"Working with Piston Cloud from day one, we have been thrilled with the company's growth and traction in the market. We believe the company has the talent, technology and vision to deliver next-generation cloud to the enterprise and beyond."
-Kevin Ober, Managing Director, Divergent Ventures

"After our initial Series A investment, we have watched Piston Cloud grow substantially and lead the commercial OpenStack market. The promise of their core technology, combined with the management team's track record and OpenStack history, continues to make this a compelling and exciting investment opportunity."
-Lars Leckie, Managing Director, Hummer Winblad

"Having worked with Piston Cloud since 2011, we've been impressed by the team and their innovative approach. At True Ventures, we are big believers in disruptive technologies; and we are excited about Piston Cloud's high-leverage, differentiated software business model. The Piston Cloud team has a compelling vision and has proven their ability to execute."
-Puneet Agarwal, Partner, True Ventures

Additional Resources
Piston Cloud website
Piston Cloud blog
Piston Cloud on Twitter

About Piston Cloud Computing, Inc.
Piston Cloud Computing, Inc. is the enterprise OpenStack™ company. Founded in early 2011 by technical team leads from NASA and Rackspace®, Piston Cloud is built around OpenStack, the fastest growing, massively scalable open cloud framework. Piston Enterprise OpenStack™ is the first fully automated bare-metal cloud software built on OpenStack and the first OpenStack distribution specifically focused on security and easy operation of web-scale private clouds. Piston Cloud is based in San Francisco and funded by Cisco Systems, Inc., Data Collective, Divergent Ventures, Hummer Winblad, Swisscom Ventures and True Ventures. Visit Piston Cloud online at www.pistoncloud.com.

Media Contact
Kelly Indrieri
Kulesa Faul for Piston Cloud
+1 (650) 340 1983
Email Contact

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