Code 42 Software raises $52.5M to raise profile for online backup

Code 42 Software has been growing quietly in the background, providing online backup for consumers and enterprises. But after a decade of growth, it’s ready to raise its sales and marketing profile. So the company is announcing today it has raised $52.5 million from Accel Partners and Split Rock Partners.

Online backup has become a crowded and important market, now that both consumers and enterprises are generating a mountain of data, much of it stored … Continue Reading

Seagate gives you new entertainment choices with 4G LTE storage

Seagate is announcing today that it is teaming up with Verizon Wireless to create the first 4G LTE mobile wireless storage devices for use with smartphones and tablets.

The devices use 4G LTE mobile networking to connect to the internet from any location and essentially allow you to add huge amounts of storage to your mobile device. Using the wireless connectivity, you can use your smartphone or iPad to view more than 300 high-definition movies … Continue Reading

Paying for the petabyte future, one gigabyte at a time

Cloud storage is easy, but if you’ve got a lot of data, the costs can escalate quickly.

Case in point: DNAnexus, a startup that is storing DNA data so researchers can access and analyze it through a web interface, is using Amazon Web Services (AWS) to power its applications, and Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) to store data.

The company now has half a petabyte of data stored in the cloud, at a cost of … Continue Reading

For super-fast laptops, Seagate launches next-generation hybrid flash/hard drive

Seagate is now shipping a second-generation drive that combines chip-based flash memory with a mechanical hard disk. The combination results in a high-speed, high-capacity drive for laptops and the fastest personal computers.

The hybrid technology is innovative because it combines the speed of flash chips with the low-cost and high storage capacity of hard disks. And Seagate uses software that is smart enough to disguise the storage from the user, who will never know if … Continue Reading

Google about to make Google Docs into a virtual hard drive called Google Drive

Google appears to be close to rebranding its online document service, Google Docs, as a virtual hard drive in the cloud.

A blurry screenshot (shown above) snapped by blogger and social media consultant Johannes Wigand appears to show a slightly modified version of Google Docs, called Drive. The screen appeared for a few seconds in “an event powered by Google,” Wigand reports.

The screenshot looks almost identical to the “new look” for Google Docs that’s … Continue Reading

Dropbox funding: Are founders personally cashing in on $300M round?

[Update: We've just heard from a close source close to the investor syndicate on the pending round, and he said it's not true the founders are getting a majority of the round. He would not specify details.]

Cloud storage service Dropbox could be using the “vast majority” of the funds raised in a new $200-$300 million round to provide liquidity  to the company’s founders, according to a source familiar with the funding.

That … Continue Reading

Minus gets a plus from IDG, grabs $1M to take on file sharing giants

File sharing start up Minus has gotten a $1M seed round from IDG Capital Partners to make sharing files as easy as sharing a link.

File sharing is a crowded space. Minus is up against competitors like Dropbox, SugarSync, Box.net, and Zumodrive. In order to succeed Minus is focused on a slightly different angle: providing a link to content .

“[They] are not meant for my mom or dad to use on a daily basis … Continue Reading

Consumer electronics battery maker Leyden Energy raises $20M

Leyden Energy, a developer of consumer electronics batteries that operate at temperatures as high as 60°C, announced today that it has raised $20 million in its second round of funding led by New Enterprise Associates.

The company makes lithium-ion batteries that work in high-heat environments, such as on a laptop that generates a lot of heat when doing a lot of work. The Macbook Pro, for example, heats up quickly when doing video editing or … Continue Reading

Box.net CEO: Apple’s cloud strategy is like Microsoft’s, and it won’t work

There’s not much future in online office-suite apps, like the ones Microsoft and Apple offer, if you believe Box.net chief executive Aaron Levie.

Rather than getting all their office apps from one vendor, he said, the best strategy in the enterprise space — and now the consumer space — is to find a service that wraps together the best apps from multiple companies that all do one thing very well.

Box.net (which specializes in enterprise … Continue Reading

Dropbox teams up with Softbank, Sony Ericsson to conquer Asia and Europe

Web storage service Dropbox has signed deals with Japanese mobile carrier Softbank and cell phone manufacturer Sony Ericsson to accelerate its international expansion in Asia and Europe.

Dropbox’s mobile application will be preloaded on Sony Ericsson’s Android smartphones on European and Asia-Pacific countries starting today, Bloomberg reports. Softbank will have Dropbox pre-installed on two of its Android phones. The terms of the deals were not disclosed.

Softbank is Japan’s third largest mobile carrier. It will … Continue Reading

Did Apple spend $4.5 million to name its cloud storage service iCloud?

Apple may have purchased the domain iCloud.com from Sweden-based company Xcerion for a reported $4.5 million, according to GigaOM.

If the news is true, iCloud could be the name Apple has given to its yet-to-be-launched cloud-based media storage service, which will allow iTunes customers to access songs and videos remotely via the internet.

Apple is rushing to launch its service before rivals Google and Amazon with licensing agreements from the four major music record labels. … Continue Reading

Virtual storage startup Nutanix emerges from stealth, grabs $13.2M

Virtual storage startup Nutanix came out of stealth mode today, officially announcing $13.2 million in a first round of institutional funding.

The company said it will take aim at the $20 billion market currently building private clouds for server or desktop virtualization and service providers building public clouds.

The appliance leverages server-attached solid-state drives (SSDs) and hard disks, enabling organizations to run virtual machines without requiring a complex and costly SAN (storage area network) or … Continue Reading

Need storage? Find it with SpareFoot — which just raised $1.5M

SpareFoot, an online listing of self-storage units, has raised an extra $1.5 million to complete its second round of funding — and it’s destined to save hours and hours of drama for college students everywhere as the semester comes to a close.

The most popular search on that site is “college summer storage” — not that it should come as any kind of surprise.

I wish I knew about this site when I was at … Continue Reading

Western Digital buys Hitachi's storage business for $4.3B

Western Digital is taking a swing at its chief rival Seagate with a $4.3 billion acquisition today of the storage division of Hitachi.

The acquisition of Hitachi Global Storage Technologies signals a new phase of consolidation in the hard disk drive business, where Seagate and WD are fierce rivals. The deal is the biggest in hard drives since Seagate bought Maxtor for $2 billion in 2005.

The deal includes $3.5 billion in cash and $750 … Continue Reading

Clickfree introduces hassle-free wireless backup for mutiple computers

Clickfree is introducing today a system that can back up your data from multiple computers using a wireless network.

The company has made it easy to back up data automatically simply by plugging a backup hard disk drive into a computer’s universal serial bus (USB) port. But the new version lets a user back up as many computers as they want — both Windows or Mac — via a wireless connection.

This is the kind … Continue Reading

Scale Computing raises $17M to sell storage one terabyte at a time

Scale Computing, a provider of small-scale computer storage databases, announced today that it has raised $17 million in its third round of funding to triple its staff over the next three years.

Scale Computing sells servers loaded with the company’s custom storage software for small businesses that don’t necessarily need the petabytes of storage that massive companies need. The company offers 3TB nodes for $12,000, 6TB nodes that cost $15,000, and 12TB nodes that cost … Continue Reading

Windows Phone 7: Mac sync coming this year, will support removable storage (sort of)

Microsoft announced that it will release a tool later this year to let Mac users sync “select content”, Engadget reports. In other news, we finally have some idea of how the platform will handle external storage, thanks to technology reporter Paul Thurrott.

While I don’t think Microsoft’s announcement means that we’ll see a full Zune client on Macs this year, it’s a clear sign that the company isn’t willing to ignore Mac users this time … Continue Reading

Pogoplug launches Pro for sharing personal files over the Internet

Cloud Engines, maker of the Pogoplug device for accessing and sharing content from your hard drive via the internet, today announced the launch of Pogoplug Pro. And for those who never liked the device because it was bright pink, the new Pro comes in black.

The device lets users save content safely on USB hard drives connected to the Pogoplug device and is available from any Internet enabled device, including apps for the iPhone, Android, iPad, BlackBerry, … Continue Reading

IBM buys data analytics company Netezza for $1.7B

IBM announced this morning that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Netezza, a company that focuses on data warehousing and business analytics, for approximately $1.7 billion.

The deal is still subject to Netezza shareholder and regulatory approval and is expected to close in the fourth quarter of this year. IBM will pay $27 a share for the company, which closed at $24.60 a share on Friday.

Netezza provides analytics inside of a data … Continue Reading