Funding affirms the need for the Apache Cassandra distributed database

CANBERRA, Australia, September 11, 2014 — Instaclustr, a new high-tech venture delivering hosted and managed DataStax Enterprise and Apache Cassandra™ services, today announced that it has successfully closed on a first round investment offer for over $2 million in seed funding.

The funding was led by ANU Connect Ventures, a fund manager responsible for investing in promising commercial opportunities arising out of the Australian National University research, other regional research institutions and local innovative companies. DataStax, the company that delivers Apache Cassandra to the enterprise, also participated in this round.

Instaclustr secures $2M in Seed funding from ANU Connect Ventures and other angel investors.

Comments on the news

“As the Cassandra community continues to thrive and grow, there is a strong base of companies that want a managed Apache Cassandra offering in the public cloud,” said Matt Pfeil, co-founder and chief customer officer, DataStax.  “Instaclustr provides a great solution for that need, and this partnership and investment will help both the Cassandra community and DataStax customer base.”

“We have undertaken considerable due diligence on the potential of Apache Cassandra and the demand for managed services in this space,” said Nick McNaughton, CEO of ANU Connect Ventures. “We also believe in the capability of the Instaclustr management and technical teams and consider that they are well placed to build a significant global software business.”

“Demand for Apache Cassandra has accelerated significantly over the last 18 months and so has the need for a hosted and totally managed service,” said Doug Stuart, CEO of Instaclustr. “We provide our customers with assurance that their data is being managed efficiently and effectively, enabling them to concentrate on their applications and extracting useful and valuable information from their datasets.”

LEADING CASSANDRA-AS-A-SERVICE

Instaclustr provides a totally managed service for Apache Cassandra and DataStax Enterprise in the cloud. The service includes automated deployment, configuration and performance tuning, monitoring and altering and security services including backups. Instaclustr is the first company to provide a managed service in this leading NoSQL ecosystem.

With this investment, Instaclustr aims to accelerate growth and further extend capability and product features. The company is also establishing a startup program aimed at complementing DataStax’s investment in new ventures. Instaclustr will be rapidly growing the engineering and support teams to meet the growing demand for hosted and managed Apache Cassandra services.

News of the successful round comes during the global Cassandra Summit in San Francisco, CA on September 10 and 11 and after last week’s announcement that DataStax has raised $106million, which demonstrated that Apache Cassandra and DataStax Enterprise are leading the charge in this new world of distributed database technologies.

Cassandra Summit 2014

On September 10th and 11th, leading technology companies including Sony, Target, Google, Microsoft, Instagram and Credit-Suisse will be demonstrating how Apache Cassandra has transformed their business at the fifth annual Cassandra Summit which is being held at the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco, CA.

About Instaclustr

Instaclustr is a company dedicated to providing a totally managed Cassandra-as-a-Service solution for our customers. The hosted Cassandra and DataStax Enterprise solutions power mission-critical big data applications for customers, enabling them to transform their business and engage like never before with their customers.

Instaclustr powers the backend of these companies allowing them to concentrate on the development of their business applications and engaging effectively with their customers.

For more information, visit Instaclustr.com and follow us @Instaclustr.

About DataStax

DataStax delivers Apache Cassandra™, the leading distributed database technology, to the enterprise. Apache Cassandra™ is built to be agile, always-on, and predictably scalable to any size.

With more than 400 customers in over 50 countries, DataStax is the database technology and transactional backbone of choice for the world’s most innovative companies such as Netflix, Adobe, Intuit, and eBay. Based in Santa Clara, CA, DataStax is backed by industry-leading investors including Comcast Ventures, Crosslink Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Meritech Capital, Premji Invest and Scale Venture Partners.

About Apache Cassandra

Apache Cassandra is an open source distributed database management system designed to handle large amounts of data across many commodity servers, providing high availability with no single point of failure. Cassandra offers robust support for clusters spanning multiple data centers, with asynchronous masterless replication allowing low latency operations for all clients.

About ANU Connect Ventures

ANU Connect Ventures is a fund manager for the venture capital partnership between The Australian National University (ANU) and Australia’s motor trades and allied industries superannuation fund, MTAA Super. ANU Connect Ventures is responsible for investing in promising commercial opportunities arising out of ANU research, other regional research institutions and local innovative start-up companies, a fund manager responsible for investing in promising commercial opportunities arising out of the Australian National University research, other regional research institutions and local innovative companies.