Actifio – The Billion Dollar Club Member

According to a report by Signals and Systems Telecom, the global market for Big Data-related hardware, software and professional services is expected to be worth $30 billion this year. The researcher estimates the industry to grow 17% annually over the next six years to be worth $76 billion by the year 2020.

Actifio’s Offerings
While a lot of the data being generated today is unstructured, there is also an explosion of copies of data that is resulting in adding to the overall Big Data volumes. Waltham, MA-based Actifio was founded in 2009 by Ash Ashutosh to address the issue of data copy management. Through his experiences at HP Storage and his earlier venture AppIQ, Ashutosh noted how companies were using more than two thirds of storage capacity to store copies of their data. An initial survey of 46 prospective customers showed that companies were spending 5-13 times more on storing copies of data than on storing the data itself.

Actifio noted that while most companies were focused on managing the production data, the main copy of the data, there wasn’t much focus on the data copy. After identifying this gap, Actifio went about creating a solution that allows copies to be stored efficiently and people to access information more efficiently.

Their core product Actifio Copy Data Storage began by utilizing the trends of virtualization, storage commoditization, and the shift from tape to disk media to create a storage service that could be achieved at lower costs while increasing performance and availability. The solution is based on patented Virtual Data Pipeline technology that offers the cloud or an on-premise approach that eliminates the siloed data storage method. It combines individual parts of the data life cycle under a single service-level agreements, thus reducing data management costs. Their offerings have been adopted by nearly 300 organizations in more than 30 countries worldwide. Their customer list includes names like Unilever, HBO, and Netflix.

In a report in 2013, IDC estimated that globally organizations were spending nearly $44 billion on copy data. The market was estimated to grow 5.4% annually over the period 2013 through 2016. Actifio is addressing this market opportunity through their products.

Actifio’s Financials
Actifio earns revenues by charging companies a fee for data management based on the volume of data being managed by them. They claim that their mid-market customers pay an estimated $200,000 a year and larger companies spend as much as $1.8 million-$2 million on subscription to their service. Their average deal size is estimated to be $388,000.

Actifio’s detailed financials are not known, but analysts estimate that revenue for 2013 was between $50 million-$100 million. Another report pegs their revenues for 2014 at “well over” $40 million.

The company is venture funded so far with $207.5 million in funding from investors including Advanced Technology Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Technology Crossover Ventures, Tiger Global Management, Greylock Partners, and North Bridge Venture Partners. Their last round of funding was held in March this year when they raised $100 million in a round led by Tiger Global Management at a valuation of $1.1 billion. The recently raised funds suggest that while the company hopes to go public, they are not eyeing a listing soon. Actifio plans to use the latest funds to  drive international expansion.