CloudByte Inc., building next generation storage virtualization products, announced that it has raised $2.1 million in a Series A funding led by Nexus Venture Partners. Kae Capital also invested as a part of this fund raise.

CloudByte Inc. was founded a year ago by a team of senior technology professionals with extensive experience at Novell, NetApp, HP, Juniper Networks, Bell Labs, and Amazon, and a background in creating, developing and managing products in cloud storage and security technology areas.

Srivibhavan Balaram, Founder & CEO, CloudByte, said, "Storage virtualization is far behind server virtualization in terms of delivering security, predictable performance and high utilization in a manageable and cost effective manner. The CloudByte solution bridges this gap by delivering full-functionality storage virtualization so that enterprises and cloud service providers can reap the full benefits of a virtualized data center. The funding will be used to expand sales efforts in the US and Asia markets and for ongoing product development. Nexus has backed successful companies like Cloud.com and Gluster in cloud and storage areas, and we see them as great partners as we create a leader in the storage virtualization space. We also wish to thank Kae capital for trusting our vision and investing in our future."

"To maximize the benefit they gain from server virtualization, enterprises and service providers are seeking cost effective solutions to improve storage utilization without impacting performance. The CloudByte founders have built a world class product to address this issue. At Nexus, we look to back companies that address infrastructure pain points in the migration to the cloud and we are excited about partnering with CloudByte", Sandeep Singhal, Nexus Venture Partners, said.

With a strong development team based out of Bangalore, CloudByte has already filed several patents and has a number of pilot projects underway with leading cloud service providers, enterprises, and storage resellers. CloudByte provides service providers and enterprises a carrier grade multi-tenant storage solution with predictable performance, secure isolation, and ease of administration, based on open standards and at an affordable price point. CloudByte 5.0 is a software only solution that is highly scalable with an open architecture based on industry standard protocols which enables customers to consolidate their existing storage infrastructure and expand seamlessly using commodity hardware.