Data centre startup Plexxi lands additional funding

Stealthy data centre start-up Plexxi has landed another $20 million in funding as it continues development of a network fabric to tie together applications, compute and storage.

Plexxi’s investors in its Series B round include Lightspeed Venture Partners, which led the round, as well as Series A investors Matrix Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners. The $20 million brings Plexxi’s total funding to $28 million.

“We consider this new financing a very strong endorsement of our strategy, our product plans and our team,” said co-founder Dave Husak.

Husak saidthat Plexxi, which is based in Nashua, N.H., is still not ready to disclose details of its developments or products, which are intended to address the challenges in building “state-of-the-art” enterprise and cloud data centre networks with “20th-century networking technology,” and the need for a “better solution.”

Plexxi states that current network technologies represent “the last bastion of the monolithic computing era.” Originally conceived and designed for a different set of requirements, today’s network is the biggest obstacle to realising modern day application, computing and storage advances in the data centre, the company’s website states.

“Connecting what you want, where you want, and how you want — without the complexity, rigidity and fragility of traditional hierarchical networks — is just the beginning of a whole new frontier in networking,” the Plexxi website states.

Husak, who is also CEO of Plexxi, worked at Apollo Computer and 3Com after 3Com bought his company Synernetics, a maker of ATM switches, in 1993. He was also involved with another startup, C-Port, which was acquired by Motorola in 2000 for $430 million. Husak also co-founded Reva Systems, a maker of RFID products, which was sold in December to Odin Technologies. Another co-founder of Plexxi is Ephraim Dobbins, formerly vice president of engineering at Acme Packet.