Technologies are constantly emerging that to capture all the requirements of modern computing, mobile, security, apps, file-sharing and so on. Nothing new there, but considering that there’s always an array of competitors doing things their own way, shooting for their own market, based on their own plans, it can be interesting to see how those things play out. Some go with a consumer focus, some mid-size business first, subscription-based, appliances, the enterprise – and some or all of the above.

Zeroing in on file-sharing the story is no different really, it’s a need that has come up from the alignment of mobility, ubiquitous internet, telecommuting, a globalized workplace and all that comes with those in consumer and business needs. Some are looking at this ‘rat race’ in this area and mistakenly lump all the offerings in together. So you have these companies that have a wide consumer-level knowledge like Dropbox and Box that have taken the spotlight and grabbed a bunch of market share.

That’s a testament to their success Freemium model in the consumer space and heavy marketing expenditures. Inevitably of course, consumer technology seeps into the enterprise as mobile devices themselves once did. Enterprise file-sharing in these realms, well they require enterprise features. That’s where Egnyte steps in with their enterprise focused file-sharing platform. Their big news is that they’ve secured with investor confidence a sizable and pivotal Series D round of funding.

Egnyte – The Enterprise file-share solution

The funding news –

Egnyte, the provider of the most comprehensive file-sharing platform for the enterprise, has closed its $29.5 million Series D funding round with participation from Northgate Capital Group, strategic partners Seagate Technology and CenturyLink, along with additional support from existing investors Google Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Polaris Partners. The funds will be used to help the company expand globally, as well as make strategic investments in product development, sales and marketing.

Egnyte’s product is most definitely focused on the enterprise- all those needs like security, flexibility, scalability, collaboration, management and more – that’s how it’s built from the ground up. Egnyte is planning to take this funding and break from the pack to run their own race. The enterprise demands better quality solutions that are high on security and reliability, it’s something that cloud-only solutions are really struggling with and that is where Egnyte plans to emerge and differentiate even further. They have over 40,000 customers around the world to date, handling file-sharing and storage with an approach that in many customer scenarios merges the requirement of accommodating the most highly sensitive documents that have to be on site with the flexibility to have a cloud-based classification of security at the same time. All of it designed to be easily managed, easily integrated, designed for speed and more.

Vineet Jain, CEO & Co-Founder of Egnyte adds:

We have been highly capital efficient, having raised “only” $33M till this round. To walk into 2014 with the revenue growth and in the increasing marketing opportunity, my belief that “cloud is not enough” is the right approach for mid-market and large enterprises.

The tale of the tape – Egnyte’s revenue is in the $25 – 40M range. They have some 20,000 local storage devices in these hybrid deployments and they are storing 20 Petabytes in the cloud. 2014 figures to be another big year for them, with this funding as the word gets out and needs for this type of technology continue to increase.  Egnyte is a company to watch.