According to IDC, the global enterprise storage systems market increased 21.3% over the year to $13.2 billion during the second quarter of 2018. The market is dominated by bigger established players such as Dell with 19% and HPE with 17% share. Billion Dollar Unicorn Cohesity is a small but emerging player in the space.

Cohesity’s Offerings

San Francisco-based Cohesity was founded in 2013 by Nutanix co-founder and an early Google tech leader Mohit Aron. After leaving Google, Mohit went on to set up Nutanix where he helped invent a hyperconverged storage data center hardware. Nutanix went on to list at a valuation of $4 billion, but Mohit was too bored at Nutanix. He had already made his fortune at Google and through earlier investments in other tech companies. He wasn’t in need of the money but wanted to “solve the problem for rest of the data center“. He realized that customers were looking for a product that worked like a hyperconverged storage data center for backup storage. Nutanix’s management was not keen on Mohit’s idea. So, he decided to quit and set up Cohesity.

Mohit believes that the secondary storage market is a $60 billion market opportunity. Today, Cohesity’s platform delivers enterprise customers with the ability to share files and provides them with a repository for unstructured data, backup, test and development, and network attached storage for their secondary storage.

Cohesity continues to upgrade its product offerings. It recently released a SaaS-based management solution Helios, which has been built on its core DataPlatform. Helios allows users to see, manage, and take action on their secondary data and applications globally and to apply powerful analytics and machine learning capabilities to generate insights from unstructured data.

Earlier this year, Cohesity expanded the use of its platform to handle file and object storage. It has also driven deeper integration with cloud providers including AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud to allow organizations to protect cloud-based applications and expand on-premise file and object sharing onto public cloud infrastructure.

Cohesity’s products have managed to attract companies like Air Bud Entertainment, AutoNation, Beam Suntory, BC Oil and Gas Commission, and Hyatt as its customers.

Cohesity’s Financials

Cohesity is privately held and does not disclose detailed financials. Recent reports suggest that the company is trending at annual revenue run rates of over $200 million. Sales are expected to have quadrupled in fiscal 2018, which ended in July this year.

The company has raised $410 million in funding from investors including Cisco Investments, Sequoia Capital, Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital, Softbank Vision Fund, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Battery Ventures. Its last funding round was held in June this year when it raised $250 million at an undisclosed valuation in a round led by SoftBank Group Corp.’s Vision Fund. Other investors in the round included Cisco Investments, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital, and Sequoia Capital. A round held in April this year had valued it at $900 million. Cohesity plans to use the latest round to fund global expansion to address its $60 billion market opportunity. An IPO has not been announced yet, but the market is eagerly waiting for it.

Meanwhile, I would like to know from the users why do they choose Cohesity over other bigger vendors like Dell and HPE? And those that don’t choose Cohesity, what is Cohesity missing?