The autonomous cloud storage optimization startup Datafy Inc. says it’s ready to help enterprises pounce on some massive cost savings after closing on $20 million in seed funding.
It’s a big number for a seed round, and it comes from some prestigious backers, namely Bessemer Venture Partners, which led the round, and Insight Partners, which participated.
Datafy has created an autonomous storage optimization engine that it says is able to slash businesses’ cloud storage costs by up to 50% with minimal effort on their end. At present, its compatible with Amazon Web Services storage environments. All customers have to do is connect it to their storage environment and select the volumes they want to optimize for costs. Once activated, Datafy’s low-level optimization layer will automatically adjust each storage volume size in real time, according to the level of consumption.
In an email interview with SiliconANGLE, Datafy co-founder and Chief Executive Zivan Ori said his company’s approach is as nondisruptive as it’s possible to be. Instead of providing recommendations, like other FinOps platforms do, it skips that part altogether and just goes ahead and implements them right away.
That means it’s 100% autonomous, eliminating the need for infrastructure and DevOps teams to have to constantly right-size their storage resources manually. At the same time, users can dig in and check the status of their storage volumes, and adjust things manually if the need arises.
“Our product approach is unique in that we are not an automation tool, nor an observability tool,” Ori explained. “What we are doing is rebuilding the storage infrastructure layer, performing actions the user can’t do on their own, with no disturbance or downtime, in a fully automatic way. This approach allows you to increase your storage effectiveness by two-to-five times, without any disturbance, improving your existing stack on the fly.”
Ori said the company’s platform is based on a zero-downtime auto-scaling engine that’s paired with a proprietary sensor technology that continuously monitors storage consumption. It can be installed with just a couple of clicks, with no code changers or engineering required.
Since launching last year, Datafy has witnessed strong adoption of its platform in industries where cloud storage usage is growing rapidly, especially among those that use artificial intelligence, which requires immense amounts of data. “In today’s technology stack, cloud storage is foundational and used by a wide variety of companies, and if they’re using it, they’re almost certainly using it inefficiently,” Ori said. “That’s just the reality with existing tools and infrastructure, and it’s what we’re trying to solve.”
One of its major customers is the transportation software firm Via Transportation Inc., which heaped praise on the startup for the results it has seen. Via, which sells software for managing public transportation networks, is tasked with ensuring the stability and efficacy of those systems 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and to do that it has to ensure its own infrastructure is just as dependable. That’s where Datafy comes in.
“Datafy has the system to automatically scale storage as demands shift, without downtime or wasted spend,” Via Chief Technology Officer Lior Gernenstein said. “With clear visibility into utilization, we can make smarter infrastructure decisions and stay focused on delivering reliable, resilient transportation to the communities we serve.”
Ori accepted that $20 million is an unusually high number for a seed funding round, but said the funds are necessary because the company is trying to tackle a huge and worsening problem. “In the infrastructure space, you usually need a substantial investment to ensure you have the tools to solve issues reliably and efficiently,” he said.
The funds from today’s round will help Datafy expand its presence into the U.S. and develop even more effective storage optimization tools. It’s also going to use some of the money to scale its partner ecosystem.
Bessemer Ventures’ Adam Fisher said he believes Datafy has taken a “deep tech approach” that stands apart from others in the cloud storage optimization business. “Unlike so many others trying to help customers save cloud costs on the operational level, Datafy has developed a product for the most demanding and sophisticated users of cloud storage,” he added.
Image: Datafy
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