Nimble Storage Affirms Position as Fastest-Growing Storage Company in History

SAN JOSE, CA--(Marketwire - Feb 15, 2012) - Nimble Storage, the provider of flash-accelerated, no-compromise storage solutions, today announced it closed the last year with record growth and revenue. Nimble Storage achieved 500 percent growth over the same quarter in 2010 and 80 percent quarter-over-quarter growth, while adding more than 100 new customers in Q4 alone. The company's ability to execute has propelled it ahead of the industry's most successful storage companies at a similar stage. The company also expanded into Canada and the European market, opening offices in Vancouver, Toronto, London, Amsterdam and Hamburg. Current customers include Grocery Outlet, Premier Medical, Howard Rice and Plaxo, and represent a variety of industries, including retail, services, financial, government, legal and healthcare.

To support its rapid international sales growth and bolster R&D, last July the company raised $25 million in an over-subscribed Series D round of funding led by Artis Capital Management, which was joined by existing investors Accel Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Sequoia Capital. To date, the company has received total funding of $58 million. Demand for its products also drove rapid employee hiring, particularly in engineering and sales, bringing the company's total to more than 150 employees, up from 38 a year ago.

"Nimble Storage designed its CS-Series arrays to be simple to buy, simple to install and simple to use. The system takes the guesswork out of having to optimize and re-optimize for changing workloads -- allowing storage and virtualization administrators to concentrate on higher-value business objectives," said Steve Duplessie, founder and senior analyst of Enterprise Strategy Group. "If Nimble Storage continues to execute as it has, it will have the opportunity to alter the storage landscape as we know it. Eliminating guesswork and automating the optimization of the two primary metrics -- performance and cost -- will have the IT community singing the praises of the company."

Industry Recognition

Nimble Storage's innovative storage technology garnered important industry awards in 2011:

• Cool Vendor: Analyst firm Gartner chose Nimble Storage as one of six Cool Vendors in Storage Technologies for 2011. The list highlights interesting new vendors that have caught Gartner's attention with innovative technologies that have or will have a business impact.
• The Next Big Thing: The Wall Street Journal's The Next Big Thing list identifies and ranks venture-backed companies that have the capital, executive experience and investor know-how to succeed and make waves in their industry.
• FASTech 50: This list, selected by Dow Jones VentureWire and a board of leading venture capitalists, identifies technology startups with the most innovative and investment-worthy technologies.
• Execullence Award for Coolest New Technology: This award, which recognizes innovative companies and technologies, was granted at the ExecEvent for Virtualization and Cloud.

Continued Product Innovation

During 2011, Nimble Storage added to its product line at both the high and low end of the market.

• CS210: The entry-level CS210 brought enterprise-class storage area network (SAN) functionality and performance that was previously not available to smaller IT environments.
• CS260: The CS260 established a new standard for enterprise-class density and performance by providing a five-fold increase in storage density over high-performance arrays offered by other providers.
• Nimble Storage OS 1.1: This operating system upgrade offers a vCenter plug-in that simplifies the management of storage for VMware virtual machines.

Industry Alliances

• VMware-Ready® Certification: Nimble Storage CS-Series storage arrays are certified for interoperability with VMware ESX 4.0 and 4.1 and 5.0 server virtualization software platforms.
• Citrix Ready® Certification: Nimble Storage CS-Series arrays are verified as Citrix Ready for virtualized XenServer environments and in VDI deployments involving XenDesktop.
• CommVault® IntelliSnap™ Connect Program: Nimble Storage joined CommVault's program, enabling its arrays to integrate with CommVault's Simpana® SnapProtect® software.
• Microsoft®: Nimble CS-Series arrays are Microsoft logo certified, and integration with Microsoft VSS ensures application-consistent backups of Exchange, SQL Server® and SharePoint®.

"We ended last year with orders that were almost twice what we thought was feasible at the beginning of the year. Nimble Storage has been able to capitalize on our disruptive technology with strong execution across the board to achieve a level of maturity unmatched by most young companies," said Suresh Vasudevan, CEO of Nimble Storage. "We believe that we can continue to set a scorching pace in terms of top-line growth, customer acquisition and geographic expansion as well as in broadening our channel partner base this year."

About Nimble Storage

Founded and led by storage industry veterans, Nimble Storage is the fastest growing storage vendor in history. Nimble Storage solutions are built on the idea that enterprises should not have to compromise between performance, capacity, ease of management, and price. Nimble's patented Cache Accelerated Sequential Layout architecture, designed from the ground up to effectively combine flash with high capacity drives, makes high performance affordable, simplifies and enhances disaster recovery and backup, and delivers pain-free operations. Nimble Storage solutions are available through a global network of world class channel partners. For more information, visit www.nimblestorage.com.

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