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Virident Systems Announces Former BlueArc CEO and Hitachi Data Systems Senior Executive Mike Gustafson as New CEO and Closes $26 Million in Series D Funding

Virident Appoints Proven Storage-Industry Veteran to Lead Future Direction of Company and Closes Funding Round to Support Rapid Growth
Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Virident Appoints Proven Storage-Industry Veteran to Lead Future Direction of Company and Closes Funding Round to Support Rapid Growth

MILPITAS, Calif., September 19th, 2012—Virident Systems, Inc., a performance leader in flash-based storage class memory (SCM) solutions, today announced the appointment of Mike Gustafson as CEO and a member of its Board of Directors. The company also announced it has raised an additional $26 million in a Series D round of funding. Former CEO and co-founder Kumar Ganapathy will remain with the company and work closely with the executive team on business strategy, new product development and strategic partnerships. Mitsui Global Investments was the lead investor in the current round of funding, joined by Hercules Technology Growth Capital and existing investors Globespan Capital Partners, Sequoia Capital and Artiman Ventures, bringing total financing to $76 million. The investment will be used to fuel the company’s rapid growth by expanding in the areas of sales and marketing as well as new software and solutions development to capitalize on the big market disruption caused by server-attached flash, which is leading to software-defined storage in datacenters.

“The flash storage market is predicted to grow to $4 billion by 2015, and this investment only strengthens our conviction that Virident will become the primary industry provider of the fastest storage class memory solutions to the world’s leading enterprise datacenters,” said Sanjay Pichaiah, investment director at Mitsui Global Investment.

Gustafson brings more than 23 years of experience and leadership in the storage, computer and IT industries. He was most recently with Hitachi Data Systems, where he served as senior vice president and general manager of the File and Content Business. Gustafson served as president and CEO of BlueArc from 2005 until the acquisition of the company by Hitachi in September 2011. At BlueArc, he led a team that built the company over seven years into a top-three market-share player in enterprise network attached storage.

“The storage industry is experiencing a large disruptive market shift. Flash storage is in the infancy of its growth, and it’s only a matter of time before it will be commonplace in the datacenter,” said Gustafson. “Virident is well positioned to take advantage of this opportunity with its world-class technology, solid backing by top investors and datacenter leaders, and our employee experience and commitment to win.”

Prior to BlueArc, Gustafson was at McData, a leading Storage Area Network company, for six years, where he helped drive the company’s revenue growth and leadership in the SAN market while holding positions as senior vice president of sales and services, as well as of marketing. He was on the team that helped lead a successful IPO in late 2000; following the IPO, he helped drive the company to $440 million in revenues and established very successful OEM relationships and strategic partnerships with companies such as EMC, IBM, HDS, HP and DELL.

This news comes on the heels of Virident’s announcement of FlashMAX II, the second generation of the company's industry-leading PCIe flash-based SCM solution for enterprise environments. FlashMAX II provides unconditional performance and a higher capacity than any competing solutions in a single low-profile card, enabling organizations to make the most of crowded datacenter space and control sprawl. New to the product is its support of VMware ESXi and VDI environments for optimal performance of virtualized desktops and applications.

About Virident Systems

Virident Systems enterprise-class Storage Class Memory (SCM) solutions deliver unconditional, consistent performance that supports the most data-intensive content and applications. The inherent advantage associated with this disruptive technology revolutionizes computing by speeding application response time and optimizing datacenter efficiency for new levels of ROI. Virident Systems is backed by strategic investors, Intel®, Cisco® Systems and a storage solution provider, as well as Hercules Technology Growth Capital and venture investors Globespan Capital Partners, Sequoia Capital, Mitsui Global Investments and Artiman Ventures. For more information, visit www.virident.com.

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Virident, Virident FlashMAX, vFAS and the Virident logo are trademarks of Virident Systems. All other products and services listed herein are trademarks of their respective companies.

Media Contact:

Michelle Reingold

Trainer Communications

virident@trainercomm.com

925.271.8214