Friday, December 23, 2011

OwnCloud showered with $820K in first funding round

By Rodney H. Brown

Boston-based nascent cloud storage and sharing startup ownCloud Inc. has taken in $820,000 of a planned $1.25 million funding round, according to federal documents.

While the filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission did not name the nine backers in ownCloud’s first financing round, the company did say in a press release earlier this month that it was backed by General Catalyst. The company is making an enterprise business model out of ownCloud, an existing open source competitor to Dropbox or Box. Founders are former SUSE/Novell executive Markus Rex, who will serve as CEO and CTO, and Frank Karlitschek, founder of the ownCloud project.

In addition to the Boston office, ownCloud will maintain a research and development operation in Germany, where Karlitschek is based. The ownCloud service offers syncing of documents and contacts as well as storage and sharing of files, the company said. In a blog on the ownCloud website, Rex said, “We are sitting at a very unique crossroads here. We have an opportunity to be part of a multi-billion dollar market with a tool that has already proven to be popular.” 

The company is targeting a March official release, according to a countdown clock on the ownCloud website. In addition to using the service hosted by ownCloud, the open source software is available for free for installation on any Linux-based server running Apache, making it available as an internal cloud file sharing and syncing platform.

A call to Rex for comment was not immediately returned this morning.