BlueArc Corporation, the world leader in network storage innovation, today announced that it has secured $29 million in equity financing led by new investor Morgenthaler Ventures and including financial support from existing BlueArc investors and new investors Chevron Technology Ventures and Wasatch Advisors. This funding will enable BlueArc to dramatically expand its field sales and services team throughout North America and Europe to help meet growing demand for the company's products, and to increase the company's presence and reach to deliver the world's best network storage solution to a broader customer base. .In a separate release issued today, BlueArc announced that the company has achieved the #2 position in High-End NAS, according to the Gartner Group, for the second consecutive year. BlueArc also was listed as the fastest-growing company in the High-End NAS market for the third consecutive year. "BlueArc has one of the most compelling, high performance and feature-rich NAS solutions in the market today," said Tony Asaro, senior analyst for the Enterprise Strategy Group. "The BlueArc Titan is one of the few storage systems that provides a solution for corporate customers for database, email and file server consolidation and at the same time is well-suited for high performance computing environments. The additional funding for BlueArc will enable them to extend their reach and get in front of more customers. You need to be in it to win, as they say, and this funding allows BlueArc to be in more deals and that is what it's all about." BlueArc recently concluded its most successful quarter to date, delivering year-on-year revenue growth exceeding 150%, accelerated by the February introduction of the company's Titan 2000 series of storage systems. During the quarter, which concluded April 30, 2006, BlueArc secured a record number of new customers across a variety of industries, including Internet services, life sciences, entertainment, oil and gas, and the federal government, as well as significant traction in enterprise accounts focused on server consolidation and database. New customers, including Chevron, eMag Solutions, Media Temple, OnSite E-Discovery and others, accounted for 66 percent of revenue during this quarter, while the company's installed base continued to invest in additional BlueArc solutions. "BlueArc is in an excellent position to continue to capture significant market share. BlueArc's recent announcement of our 4th generation product, the Titan 2000 series raises the bar again against competition and addresses many unserved needs for end users combining leading network storage performance, scalability and simplified management without compromise," said Mike Gustafson, president and CEO for BlueArc. "Our plan is to aggressively increase our customer and field presence to support demand for the Titan 2000 series, continue to execute on our product roadmap and extend our market reach through strategic partnerships. We are excited to continue expanding our reach and leadership and to bring the world's best network storage solution to even more customers and markets." Morgenthaler Ventures, Chevron Texaco Technology Ventures and the Wasatch Advisors join existing investors Crosslink Capital, Fort Washington Capital Partners, Meritech Capital Partners, Weston Presidio, and the RWI Group, who also participated in the funding round. The round was oversubscribed, and saw the company's valuation increase significantly over the most recent funding completed in the spring of 2005. "In today's storage market, only BlueArc delivers performance, scalability and the ability to consolidate storage economically. You just can't get that combination anywhere else, a fact that has enabled BlueArc to build a very impressive list of customers and clear market momentum," said Gary Morgenthaler, general partner at Morgenthaler Ventures, and a new addition to BlueArc's board of directors. "BlueArc is an ideal fit for Morgenthaler Ventures' strategy of IT investing. We typically invest in early-stage portfolio companies, but we also invest in a select, few late-stage companies that are well on their way to becoming market leaders. BlueArc fits that profile." Earlier this year, BlueArc announced the availability of the Titan 2000 series of storage systems. Consisting of the Titan 2100 and Titan 2200 storage systems, the series delivers the world's highest performance and capacity for network storage. BlueArc's Titan 2200 Storage System is also the world-record holder for network storage performance in single and dual node configurations, as proven by the Standard Performance Evaluation Corp. (SPEC) System File Server (sfs) test for network storage server performance. The Titan 2000 series also delivers customers the strongest virtualization framework on the market today -- which includes a global namespace, virtual storage pools, virtual servers, and virtual volumes. In combination with a leading software suite featuring enterprise applications such as policy-based data migration and replication, iSCSI, enhanced data protection, disaster recovery tools and a WORM file system, the Titan 2000 series extends BlueArc's product leadership, offering a complete solution to customers in all markets, from servers to storage and software. With more than 500 system deployments to more than 160 customers in a wide variety of markets worldwide, many of whom have deployed BlueArc to support infrastructures of more than 100 terabytes apiece, BlueArc storage systems enable customers to dramatically reduce project times by delivering performance as much as 10 times higher than alternative environments, while delivering unequalled data protection, classification and policy-based management features. In many cases, BlueArc customers have replaced hundreds of direct attached storage devices or consolidated multiple legacy filers to a single Titan, due to the systems' unparalleled performance and scalability.