The previously self-funded multicloud data backup and recovery-as-a-service provider HYCU Inc. has gotten its first dose of venture capital, and it’s a hefty amount for a Series A funding round, coming in at $87.5 million.

Today’s round was led by Bain Capital Ventures with participation from Acrew Capital and is said to reinforce HCYU’s “leading market position” and strong momentum, according to the company.

The company arrived on the data protection scene in 2017 with an alternative to traditional, legacy-based services that it says are predicated on outdated and complex appliance-based storage systems. What companies need these days is a simple data backup and recovery service that takes care of their apps across the multiple cloud platforms they use, and that’s what HYCU says it provides.

Based in Boston, HYCU provides what it says are “intelligent, application-aware services” around multicloud data backup and recovery. Its data protection offerings cover Nutanix-based data centers as well as VMware environments, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. In addition, the company recently debuted its newest product, HYCU Protégé, which is a lightweight and cost-effective cross-cloud migration, management and disaster recovery service that the company says helps to make enterprise applications more agile.

HYCU Chief Executive Simon Taylor said his company was the first in the market to understand that enterprises will always operate hybrid infrastructures and, as a result, need reliable backup and recovery regardless of where their apps and data are hosted.

“At the time, the idea of breaking data protection silos and running truly as a service across the enterprise seemed a concept versus a reality,” Taylor said. “We’ve proven it’s not only possible, it’s happening now, and will be the way of the future.

HYCU claims to have a healthy customer based of more than 2,000 companies across 75 countries that use its data protection services. It’s targeting a data backup and recovery market expected to be worth more than $11 billion in 2022.

Taylor told SiliconANGLE in an interview that HYCU sought today’s funding in order to capitalize on that enormous opportunity. He said HYCU had flipped the paradigm on its head somewhat in the beginning, building its data protection platform without outside help and growing its customer base on the strength of its offering.  “We didn’t solicit capital to build something and hope customers would come,” he said.

Besides the capital injection, Taylor said HYCU will also benefit from the expertise of its new board members, Bain Capital Partner Enrique Salem and Principal Stefan Cohen. “Enrique is one of the world’s leading technology executives who’s experience running Symantec and leading its acquisition of Veritas remain to this day one of our industry’s most high profile accomplishments,” he said.

Looking ahead, HYCU is planning to use its new funding to go on an aggressive hiring spree in North America, hoping to take on more than 100 new employees in the Boston area alone, Taylor said. The capital will also help to expand and grow its portfolio of SaaS services.

One of the key items in the pipeline, Taylor said, is extending HYCU’s support for AWS. “There is a planned release for HYCU for AWS which will run as a cloud-native service in the same way we currently support Google Cloud and Azure Cloud,” Taylor said.

“The dirty secret of the cloud is that it’s bad at backup and recovery,” said Constellation Research Inc. analyst Holger Mueller. “That has opened the door for specialized data protection providers and today it is HYCU’s turn to grab the headlines. It has been self- funded for years, but now is a good time to tap into favorable capital availability and rates to maintain its growth and geographic expansion to stay among the relevant players in the space.”

Image: HYCU