Atlantis Computing Nabs $20M Series D Funding, Plans Global Expansion

The $20 million Series D financing round was led by new investor Adams Street Partners and previous investors Cisco Systems, El Dorado Ventures and Partech International. Prior to this fourth round of funding, the company's 2010 Series C funding round raised $10 million from Cisco Systems, El Dorado Ventures, Partech International, and before that, Angel investors contributed $5 million. The total raised thus far is $35 million.

"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," said Bernard Harguindeguy, president and CEO of Atlantis Computing. "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."

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Atlantis is in the midst of a major channel expansion, which the new cash infusion will help fund, executives said.

The company is expanding its channel budget and adding to its channel team, said Seth Knox, director of marketing at Atlantis Computing.

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

The number of lead generation activities that are designed to drive demand for their channel partners has doubled as well, according to Knox.

According to Harguindeguy, the latest funding round will also be used to accelerate the company's worldwide expansion in delivering its highly optimized storage infrastructure for virtualized data centers. Atlantis is looking to expand its presence and work with local partners and distributors in different regions. Currently Atlantis has a strong presence in England, Italy, Germany and the U.S and is expanding to France, Spain, central Europe and Nordic countries.

"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," said Harguindeguy. "We are investing in that growth, [in] marketing, sales and partnership."

In addition to the funding helping Atlantis expand globally, it will also help the Mountain View, Calif.-based solution provider increase the number of staff committed to recruiting, training and supporting its channel partners, Knox said. There will also be additional training, certification courses and programmatic joint marketing activities to help partners build their desktop virtualization practices and businesses.

"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," said Knox. "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."

Founded in late 2006, Atlantis Computing offers storage optimization software that enables both VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and virtualized Citrix XenApp. The Atlantis ILIO Persistent VDI 4.0, released earlier this year, enables Citrix XenDesktop and VMware Customers to deliver persistent virtual desktops. According to Harguindeguy, the virtual desktops are not only cheaper but also two to four times faster than a PC while also utilizing the customer's present images and tools.

"We are behind the largest VDI deployments in the world," said Harguindeguy. "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."

The technology is currently available for those deploying VMware View, Citrix XenDesktop or XenApp. Enterprises, government agencies and other organizations can purchase the product through Atlantis' network of channel partners. Atlantis also supports most major storage vendors including EMC, HP, NetApp and Fusion, as well as server vendors such as Cisco, IBM and Dell. According to the company, it has at least 250 customers across the U.S and Europe, which is triple its customer base it had last year. Atlantis has sold over 300,000 licenses of its desktop virtualization software.

World Wide Technology, a St. Louis, Mo.-based systems integrator and part of the CRN's 2013 Tech Elite 250, has been an Atlantis partner since late 2009, according to Scott Miller, WWT's director of data center. Currently, WWT has done 15-20 VDI deployments.

"Atlantis helps us deliver the highest performing and lowest cost per VM of VDI, and, hence, we have included [Atlantis] as part of our 'standard' in our VDI Reference Architecture," said Miller. "Their solution helped close the gap on what used to be a sales hurdle, which was the cost of storage in the VDI solution."

Harguindeguy attributes the company's success to being a channel-dedicated company.

"By being channel focused, we work with large national resellers, regional VARs and regional resellers," said Harguindeguy. "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."

In 2012, Atlantis added 68 new partners, totaling more than 150 partners worldwide, said Knox.

Atlantis' current key partners include VMware, Citrix and Cisco resellers. Everyday, Atlantis is approached by channel partners that want to add the company’s technology to their portfolios, said Harguindeguy. The company is always looking for more partners but remains selective in doing so.

"We are recruiting, training, enabling and supporting new and old channel partners," said Harguindeguy. "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."

There are extensive reoccurring revenue opportunities for solution providers with Atlantis, in terms of additional hardware, software and services, according to Knox.

"With Atlantis ILIO software, we help lower the costs, improve the users experience of the desktops and automate the deployment, said Knox. "All of which accelerate the sale of additional hardware, software and services for more and more users as the deployment is successful."

PUBLISHED MAY 21, 2013

This story was updated on May 21, 2013, at 2:06 p.m. PST, to correct that Atlantis Computing did not receive $35 in Series D funding but instead received $20 million, which brought the company's total funding to $35 million.