DataStax, the company that delivers Apache Cassandra„¢ to the enterprise, today announced that it has secured $106 million in Series E financing. This amount, together with the $84 million investment in previous rounds, brings the total invested to date to $190 million.

The round was led by Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers (KPCB) and includes a syndicate consisting of leading institutional, international and top-flight venture capital firms. ClearBridge Investments, Cross Creek Advisors and Wasatch Funds, which collectively manage more than $100 billion in mutual funds, as well as PremjiInvest and Comcast Ventures are additional new investors. All existing venture capital investors also participated in this round of financing. The highly competitive round was facilitated by Goldman Sachs.

Since the company's inception in 2010, DataStax and Cassandra have solved some of the hardest enterprise technology challenges for more than 500 global companies including Intuit, Intercontinental Hotels Group, Clear Capital, Netflix and eBay. The company has also developed strong partnerships with over 115 companies including Google, Accenture, Microsoft and HP. In just under a year, DataStax has experienced extremely rapid growth and now has:

More than 350 employees (100 percent increase since December 2013) in six global locations: Santa Clara, Austin, London, Paris, Sydney and Tokyo.
Customers which include 25 percent of the Fortune 100 enterprises.
A rapidly expanding global sales force that has grown the customer base in over 50 countries and accounts for revenue growth of more than 125 percent year over year.
A powerful and experienced executive team that is focused on scaling the company internationally. Key hires in the past year include known industry veterans Dennis Wolf as CFO, John Schweitzer as SVP of Field Operations, Tony Kavanagh as CMO and Clint Smith as General Counsel.
With this new round of funding, DataStax expects to accelerate growth and deliver sustainable long-term value and success to customers and partners. The company will continue to drive enterprise adoption and innovation in Apache Cassandra, and will further invest in the developer community, which now spans over 80 countries. DataStax also plans to continue its momentum in Europe, Asia and Japan by rapidly growing engineering, sales and marketing teams in those regions.

'Demand for DataStax is strong and accelerating as companies are realizing that in today's world you either make data the center of your business or fall far behind your competitors who do so,' said Billy Bosworth, CEO of DataStax. 'We have become the very fabric of the digital age and we are blazing the trail, helping to drive the future of enterprises and startups alike.'

As stated in the October 21, 2013 report, Magic Quadrant for Operational Database Management Systems, authored by Gartner analysts Donald Feinberg, Nick Heudecker and Merv Adrian: 'Over the past five years, a large number of new vendors has entered the transaction market with products in support of the specialized applications needed to support this new, global business world.' The report continues: 'to support the new operational DBMS market, many new and innovative vendors have emerged with new DBMS engines supporting transactions on a global scale, real-time transactions integrated with analytics, streaming data transactions and more.'

#DataStax secures $106M in Series E #funding from leading investors including @kpcb @lightspeedvp @ComcastVentures bit.ly/1qcgMYn

Perspectives on the news
'DataStax is the leader in a massive shift that is underway from relational databases to more agile NoSQL data stores for new workloads,' said KPCB Partner Matt Murphy. 'The scalability, manageability, and cost effectiveness of DataStax is not only timely, but critical at a time when companies are rapidly building out new applications and customer experiences as a competitive advantage. We are excited about investing in the leader in this radical shift.'

'Lightspeed and all previous investors are enthusiastic about significantly increasing their positions in DataStax,' said John Vrionis, General Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners. 'We led the Series A for DataStax a little over four years ago when the trend around big data was just beginning. We knew then, and it's only proven stronger in the past few years, that DataStax and Cassandra are at the forefront of distributed database innovation for companies of all sizes.'

'The tidal wave of data has swept every aspect of consumer interactions, disrupting the way we engage in everyday activities, including the future of TV,' said Matt Carbonara, investment director, Comcast Ventures. 'Comcast Ventures is excited to help DataStax scale by facilitating access to significant resources and expertise via our vast enterprise ecosystem.'

The opportunity for Distributed Database Management Systems
Traditional infrastructure and relational databases are being disrupted by a data-centric world whose new applications require emerging, rather than legacy, technologies. Industry analysts predict this transformation, driven by exploding volumes of data and new use cases such as the Internet of Things (IoT), will lead to a rapidly growing market for distributed databases. Some indicators are below:

Data Volume is Exploding: According to IDC, the amount of data we create and copy annually is doubling in size every two years, and by 2020 will reach 44 zettabytes, or 44 trillion gigabytes. 1

Large and Growing Database Market: Total spending on Distributed Database Management Systems (DBMSs) is expected to grow from $31 billion in 2013 to more than $50 billion in 2018, according to Gartner. 2

Internet of Things Creating a Connected World: Gartner predicts: 'The installed base of 'things,' excluding PCs, tablets and smartphones, will grow to 26 billion units in 2020, which is almost a 30-fold increase from 0.9 billion units in 2009. The component cost of IoT-enabling consumer things will approach $1, and 'ghost' devices with unused connectivity will be common.' 3

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 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, Calif., 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. For more information, visit DataStax.com or follow us @DataStax.

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