Cisco-Linked Digital Alpha Leads Funding In DRaaS Provider JetStream

JetStream Software is looking not only at funding from Digital Alpha Advisors, but also on help with the investor's close relationship with Cisco and others to expand its disaster recovery as a service, or DRaaS, reach.

JetStream Software, a developer of disaster recovery-as-a-service for managed service providers and cloud service providers, on Tuesday unveiled a $7.7-million series A funding round let by Cisco-affiliated private equity firm Digital Alpha Advisors.

The funding round, which is technically the first outside investment in the company that has been around for eight years in various forms and already has a good revenue stream, will help with further development and go-to-market activities, said Rich Petersen, co-founder and CEO of the San Jose, Calif.-based company.

Furthermore, the fact that the lead investor, Digital Alpha Advisors, has a strategic collaboration agreement with Cisco Systems and provides access to Cisco's pipeline of commercial opportunities is also important to JetStream Software, Petersen told CRN.

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"Cisco certainly opens doors for us," he said. "This gives us the opportunity to look at what opportunities exist in certain parts of Cisco. We don't have anything in particular planned with Cisco at this time. But Digital Alpha is very well connected, not only with Cisco, but with Cloudian and others. But our hope is some kind of relationship with Cisco."

San Mateo, Calif.-based object storage technology developer Cloudian last year raised a $94-million round of funding which included a significant amount of money from Digital Alpha Advisors.

Other Digital Alpha Advisors investments include Working Group Two, an Oslo, Norway-based developer of a mobile core network; Connexin, a London-based developer of technology for building smart cities; Quantela, a San Francisco-based startup developer of smart city automation; and UKCloud, a London-based developer of multi-cloud services. It also invested with Google Station to scale public Wi-Fi worldwide to areas with limited connectivity.

JetStream was originally founded in 2011 as FlashSoft, a developer of software to provide caching, application performance, and improved efficiency for flash memory devices. The company in 2012 was acquired by SanDisk, which was in turn acquired by Western Digital before being spun out of Western Digital in 2016 as JetStream Software.

Another investor in JetStream is Western Digital, which still retains a less-then-10-percent stake in the company since it was spun out, Petersen said.

JetStream has until its new round of funding focused on developing the intellectual property it received with the spinout from Western Digital.

Petersen said the company has a close relationship with VMware, and was co-developer of the reference architecture for the vSphere APIs for I/O filtering, or VAIO.

"We didn't really begin devops until 2017," he said.

JetStream's primary focus is on helping customers, who Petersen said are moving more and more data to the cloud, provide disaster recovery as a service instead of as an on-premises architecture.

"But MSPs are now using software that's not optimized for the cloud," he said. "Our solutions are architected from the beginning to let MSPs deliver disaster recovery services to enterprises, governments, and more."

About 90 percent of JetStream's revenue comes from MSPs and cloud service providers, Petersen said. A few customers also buy JetStream's software from channel partners for building their own private clouds, he said.

JetStream also hopes to partner with hyper-converged infrastructure vendors, and sees promise in working with Cisco to develop this market, Petersen said. The company is partnering with Cloudian and others for disaster recovery as a service in S3-compatible object storage environments, he said.

"Like everybody, we look at how to enable the best use of hyperscale platforms," he said. "We already work with VMware on AWS. And with Digital Alpha we hope will strengthen our relationships with Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and AWS."