$20M Investment in Atlantis Funds Worldwide Expansion

Atlantis Computing, a virtualization software and data center storage solutions company, has secured $20 million in Series D funding which it will use to enhance its channel efforts and expand globally.

The financing round was led by Adams Street Partners, a new investor, and former investors such as Cisco Systems, El Dorado Ventures and Partech International. Previously, the 2010 Series C funding for the company secured $10 million from Cisco Systems, El Dorado Ventures, Partech International, and $5 million was raised by Angel investors before that. So far, $35 million has been raised in total.

The president and CEO of Atlantis Computing, Bernard Harguindeguy, said: “We are thrilled to have Adam Street Partners on board. They are a good, new investor for us that has a strong presence across Europe and the U.S. They focus on companies that are leading with a strong traction in the market that are adding a lot of value and, more importantly, a very strong customer base and growth.”

The new influx of cash will help Atlantis with its major channel expansion, which is already underway. The channel budget is also being increased, and will be added to its channel team, according to the director of marketing at Atlantis Computing, Seth Knox.

Knox said: “We are definitely increasing it in terms of headcount in supporting the channel in marketing and budgeting. We are hiring aggressively in channel marketing, support, system engineering channel sales, product development and quality assurance to help support our channel partners.”

Knox also noted that there has been an increase in the number of lead generation activities which have been created in order to drive demand for their channel partners.

This recent funding will also support Atlantis in realizing its plans for global expansion, according to Harguindeguy, and will also aid in distributing the company’s highly enhanced storage infrastructure for virtualized data centers. The company’s presence and work with local partners and distributors in different areas is also expected to expand, and at present, Atlantis has offices located in England, Italy, Germany and the U.S., and is broadening its reach to France, Space, central Europe and the Nordic countries.

Harguindeguy said: “In the U.S and Canada, we do have a strong presence; ... we're adding more people to expand our geographic locations [outside North America], to work closer with partners and support them. We are investing in that growth, [in] marketing, sales and partnership.”

As well as helping Mountain View, California-based solution provider Atlantis to expand globally, the cash inflow will also assist in bringing in more staff that will be responsible for recruiting, training and supporting channel partners. Extra training will also be provided, as will certification courses and programmatic joint marketing activities that will assist partners in developing desktop virtualization practices and businesses.

Knox stated: “Channel partners will see a global expansion across the board with increases in staff to help train, support and drive demand through increased marketing activities for our channel partners. We are also investing in developing new products in the cloud and server virtualization markets that will expand the portfolio of products that are available to channel partners.”

Atlantis was established in 2006, and provides storage optimization software that can support VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and virtualized Citrix XenApp. Earlier this year, the Atlantis ILIO Persistent VDI 4.0 was also released, and means that Citrix XenDesktop and VMware customers are able to distribute persistent virtual desktops which will be cheaper and faster than PCs whilst also making use of existing images and tools from the customer.

Harguindeguy stated: “We are behind the largest VDI deployments in the world. And for an enterprise, it allows them to deploy VDI or XenApp immediately with the existing customer images, tools and processes at a fraction of the cost and with no lengthy image transformation project.”

Partners distributing View, Citrix XenDesktop or XenApp can make use of the available technology, and the product can also be bought by enterprises, government agencies and other organizations via Atlantis’ network of channel partners. Key storage vendors like EMC, HP, NetApp and Fusion are also aided by the company, as are server vendors like Cisco, IBM and Dell. There are currently around 250 customers in the U.S. and Europe, which is three times the number of customers last year. More than 300,000 licenses have been sold by Atlantis for its desktop virtualization software.

St. Louis, Missouri-based World Wide Technology is a systems integrator which has been partners with Atlantis since 2009. The director of data center at WWT, Scott Miller, said that his company has done 15-20 VDI deployments, and that “Atlantis helps [it] deliver the highest performing and lowest cost per VM of VDI, and, hence, [WWT] have included [Atlantis] as part of [its] 'standard' in its VDI Reference Architecture. Their solution helped close the gap on what used to be a sales hurdle, which was the cost of storage in the VDI solution.”

According to Harguindeguy, the success of the company is due to it being highly channel-dedicated. Harguindeguy said: “By being channel focused, we work with large national resellers, regional VARs and regional resellers. Eighty percent of our deals last year came through the channel, and a 100 percent of our deals in Europe last quarter came from the channel.”

Sixty-eight new partners were added by Atlantis last year, which means it has over 150 partners around the globe. The main partners include VMware, Citrix and Cisco resellers. According to Harguindeguy, Atlantis is keen to find new partners, but is selective in its choosing. He said: “We are recruiting, training, enabling and supporting new and old channel partners. We are protective of our channel partner's business, so we are selective and careful in bringing partners on board. We make sure that each channel partner we work with can have a solid high-gross business with us.”

Recurring and extensive revenue opportunities are available for solution providers with Atlantis, relating in particular to additional hardware, software and services. Knox added: “With Atlantis ILIO software, we help lower the costs, improve the users experience of the desktops and automate the deployment. All of which accelerate the sale of additional hardware, software and services for more and more users as the deployment is successful.” (CY) Link