As time goes on, more software and data moves to the cloud and with the migration comes the need for more advanced backup systems. Typically backup is accomplished through a combination of on premise hardware and software as well as third party cloud services. Although this may seem like an acceptable solution when you multiply it by the millions of occurrences within organizations and across the industry where the combination is in play, the system becomes quite complex and prone to error.
Poojan Kumar discovered a better solution and founded a company, Clumio, to bring native cloud backup to the market. Poojan is an expert in the software and data field. He got his start in the industry and established himself at Oracle where he was a Co-founder of Oracle Exadata. Before his nearly ten years at the company he earned a master’s in computer science from Stanford University and bachelor’s in computer science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.
While at Oracle, he was recruited to VMware to the Head of Data Products role. After nearly two years on the job, he decided to co-found a company which he also led as CEO. That company was PernixData, which was later acquired by Nutanix in 2016. He remained at Nutanix as Vice President of Engineering and Products but the entrepreneurial chord was struck again when he came up with Clumio in 2017.
Recently, Clumio announced $51 million in funding while in parallel unveiling its unique SaaS offering for enterprise backup.
Poojan had this to say, “Enterprise workloads are being ‘SaaS-ified’ because IT can no longer afford the time, complexity and expense of building and managing heavy on-prem hardware and software solutions if they are to successfully deliver against their digital transformation initiatives.” He continued, “Unlike legacy backup vendors, Clumio SaaS is born in the cloud. We have and can leverage the most secure and innovative cloud services available, now and in the future, within our service to ensure that we can meet customer requirements for backup, regardless of where the data is.”
Alongside Poojan, are co-founders Woon Ho Jung and Kaustubh Patil who both have strong engineering and leadership backgrounds from VMware and Nutanix. The funding announced came through two rounds, the first was led by Sutter Hill Ventures and the second by Index Ventures. Notable individuals joined in on the latter round and included Mark Leslie, founder of Veritas Technologies, and John Thompson, chairman of the board at Microsoft.
