Rubrik Scores Huge $61M Funding Round, Expands Data Management Focus Beyond VMware

Rubrik, a startup developer of a converged data management platform for complete data protection and data services, Tuesday announced the closing of a massive new $61 million funding round.

Rubrik also unveiled the release of a new cloud data management platform that moves the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company away from its VMware-centric solution focus to technology that enables partners to help customers manage data across a variety of physical and cloud infrastructures.

Tuesday's $61 million C series funding, led by Khosla Ventures and including existing investors, brings total funding in Rubrik to more than $112 million in the 30 months since the company was founded, said Rubrik CEO Bipul Sinha.

[Related: Rubrik Lands $41M Funding, Looks To Simplify Data Protection]

Rubrik's last funding round, which brought it $41 million, closed in May 2015.

Sinha told CRN that the new funding should be sufficient for the company to achieve cash-flow-positive status.

"We have cash from our last round," he said. "We'll be using this new funding to double down on developing new products, new marketing, and every aspect of building a large-scale company."

Tuesday's unveiling of the new Firefly release of the Rubrik Cloud Data Management platform is heavily focused on expanding Rubrik's ability to manage data across multiple platforms, Sinha said.

The Rubrik Cloud Data Management platform previously supported only VMware environments, but now supports physical Linux and SQL environments as well, he said.

The platform, which used to support only Amazon Web Services' cloud, now adds Microsoft Azure to the mix, he said. "We're seeing a lot of interest in Azure by enterprises," he said. "Azure is included in customers' enterprise license agreements. And we also needed multi-cloud capabilities, so we added Azure."

Also new to the Rubrik Cloud Data Management platform is support for remote office data protection and data management with a software-only version of the solution. The platform also adds instant replication to the cloud with the ability to use the cloud for disaster recovery, he said. "This all expands our total addressable market significantly," he said.

The expanded capabilities are important for Rubrik's growth in the channel, said an executive of one of the company's channel partners.

That executive, who asked to remain anonymous because of relationships with other vendors working in the same market, told CRN that Rubrik's new offering takes away part of the risk of working with it.

"The company is [now] no longer focused on VMware environments," the executive said. "VMware is a good place to start. But that's a risk we didn't need. We had to be careful where we positioned the technology."

The solution provider executive said there is a lot of enthusiasm about Rubrik among customers who have already implemented the vendor's technology.

"The overall data protection space is ripe for disruption," the executive said. "We're seeing vendors with 20-year-old code bases and expensive solutions. Rubrik offers complete all-in-a-box solutions. We can work with customers to define what they need, and push the data they no longer need off into cold storage. And Rubrik offers APIs we can work with."

Sinha said that Rubrik is a 100 percent channel-focused company that is looking for channel partners with experience selling data management solutions.

"We're recruiting one or two core channel partners in every market," he said. "We want to ensure our business has a sufficient impact on partners' bottom lines."

In the four quarters since Rubrik came to market, the company has seen its bookings double every quarter from the previous quarter, Sinha said. The average deal size is about $250,000, he said.