please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources . unsourced material may be challenged and removed . may 2015 learn how and when to remove this template message actifio type private industry information technology data backup big data business continuity disaster recovery data protection data storage founded 2009 headquarters waltham massachusetts key people ash ashutosh founder and ceo website http actifio.com actifio is a privately held information technology firm headquartered in waltham massachusetts . 1 the company specializes in copy data virtualization . it claims its products make information technology infrastructure more efficient and cost effective by reducing unnecessary duplication of data . 2 contents 1 history 1.1 funding 1.2 clients 1.3 awards and recognition 2 copy data 2.1 copy data management 3 products 3.1 actifio resiliency director 3.2 appliances 3.2.1 actifio cds 3.2.2 actifio 100t 3.2.3 actifio gateway 4 leadership 4.1 ash ashutosh 5 references history edit in july 2009 ash ashutosh founded actifio in waltham massachusetts . the company started with four employees . 3 it launched its first product in the fall of 2011 . 4 in 2012 gartner recommended actifio in their cool vendor report and said its products facilitated cloud based and offsite start and computing without the need to build secondary data centers . that year sales increased about 700 percent over 2011 . by then end of 2012 actifio had achieved five consecutive quarters of 500 % year on year growth . in the fourth quarter of 2012 alone actifio did 62 deals with new clients with an average value of 210 000 . in 2012 it was described as the fastest growing storage startup . 3 staffing increased from 50 in december 2011 to 120 in may 2012 . as of may 2012 about a fourth of the company s revenue came from europe . 5 6 funding edit on july 21 2010 actifio announced that it had secured 8 million in series a funding . this round was led by north bridge venture partners and greylock partners . jamie goldstein general partner at north bridge said actifio has all the ingredients for success including a hot market opportunity technology superiority and a stellar executive team that will allow actifio to deliver on the promise of data management virtualization . 7 on september 30 2010 actifio announced that it had closed on 16 million in series b funding . this round of funding was led by advanced technology ventures atv with participation by north bridge venture partners and greylock partners . it brought actifio s total venture capital funding to 24 million . 8 in 2011 actifio received 33 million in series c funding led by andreessen horowitz . this firm headed by marc andreessen and ben horowitz has also funded facebook zynga and twitter . actifio had just started looking for its next round of funding when peter levine a partner at andreesen horowitz called to merely ask about actifio s location . actifio closed on funding nine days later . levine said he did the deal because he believes actifio will dominate a large segment of the backup and storage space . north bridge venture partners greylock partners and advanced technology ventures also invested in this round of funding . after completing its series c funding actifio had received a total of 57 million in venture capital . 9 10 11 during actifio s 50 million series d round media reported that investors valued the company at 500 million . 12 after completing its series d funding the firm had received 108 million in venture capital . on 23 march 2014 actifio announced that it had raised another 100 million in series e funding from tiger global management andreessen horowitz greylock partners north bridge venture partners advanced technology ventures and technology crossover ventures that increased its implied valuation to 1.1 billion . this money came in the form of primary funding with no secondary liquidity for employees or earlier shareholders . 13 ashutosh said that 125 million could have been raised but that some money had been turned away . 75 million closed on 14 march and the rest on 7 april . after this round of funding actifio had raised 207.5 million in capital . 14 clients edit actifio clients have included time warner cable boston university medical campus navisite the city of south portland unilever ibm netflix and many other organizations 15 as of october 2012 actifio had about 180 clients and its deals averaged a value of about 250 000 . 16 by march 2013 actifio had over 300 clients in 31 countries paying an average of 349 000 per three year contract . the data under actifio management at this time was over 1 exabyte with 14 petabytes of active application data and 55 petabytes of physical storage capacity . 17 as of july 2014 there were about 400 actifio clients worldwide including both large multinationals and cloud service providers . 18 techvalidate conducted a survey that determined 88 % of actifio s customers use its copy data virtualization products for better data protection and availability ; 59 % for faster access to data for development testing and analytics ; 24 % to improve the cost effectiveness and efficiency of cloud based computing . 19 awards and recognition edit in 2012 gartner recognized actifio as a cool vendor . they said that clients should include actifio when seeking to lower the cost of data availability and protection while further leveraging existing investments in array and storage controller snapshot and replication . citation needed in the first quarter of 2013 forbes magazine named actifio one of the 50 most promising companies in america and the company received a product of the year award from storage magazine . on 1 may 2013 actifio won deal of the year at the new england venture capital association awards . 20 actifio won a new england innovation award from the smaller business association of new england the same month . 21 in 2013 gartner recognized actifio in their magic quadrant report as a visionary . citation needed on 29 april 2014 the boston business journal placed actifio on its list of 2014 best places to work . 22 copy data edit copy data consists of multiple copies of the same file . this data could come in the form of multiple copies of volumes backups test dev online copies for disaster recover etc. in a study idc found that about 75 % of storage is consumed by copy data . actifio conducts joint research with idc to understand the copy data problem in depth . 23 idc estimated that businesses would spend roughly 44 billion on coping with copy data in 2013 . copy data management edit actifio was one of the first firms to enter the copy data management cdm market . 24 gartner group analyst dave russell wrote companies keep 30 to 40 copies of their business data and managing those different copies is expensive and complicated . the reason they do it is because the data is used for different purposes backing it up to satisfy regulators letting the business recover from a fire or flood testing and developing new applications and analyzing the data to find meaningful business insights . actifio introduced cdm the idea of keeping one golden copy of the data and making it available to a company without needing to store a separate copy for each use . products edit actifio s products work by dramatically reducing unnecessary duplication of application data while ensuring that it is still protected and easily accessible through its entire lifecycle . by virtualizing data management and storage actifio s products can replace their client s siloed data protection and availability applications with a single purpose built system . actifio s products create a single golden master of production data and maintain changes to that master copy so that users running a simple single window application can recover even large data sets in minutes . 25 26 actifio claims its products can cut data management costs up to 90 % and typically replace five to 13 separate pieces of software . the company touts ease of use as a key selling point and says that its products are a pleasure to use and are designed with apple like simplicity . 6 pricing for actifio products depends on the volume of data handled with rates per terabyte decreasing as volume increases . 27 the company says that its clients get back about 15 in cost savings for every dollar spent on its products . 28 29 techvalidate determined that actifio s client s usually achieve 90 % savings calculated on a total cost of ownership basis . 30 actifio resiliency director edit in july 2014 actifio introduced resiliency director an automated disaster recovery tool . with resiliency director actifio says the disaster recovery process from testing to actual execution can be ... automated the time spent on recovering large numbers of applications and virtual machines is collapsed from days to minutes . sungard availability services a disaster recovery firm was able to recover hundreds of virtual machines in less than 20 minutes during a test of resiliency director . actifio says that resiliency director is the world s fastest cloud business continuity solution . 26 appliances edit actifio cds edit the actifio cds is a storage appliance that can scale to up to 2 petabytes of capacity . it is available in six standard configuration including most storage services such as data lifecycle management reduplication and backup replication failover testing and fallback automation . options are available for exchange sharepoint and bare metal restoration . actifio 100t edit the actifio 100t is a storage appliance that can scale to up to 2 petabytes of capacity . it is available in six standard configurations including support for storage services such as data lifecycle management reduplication and backup replication failover testing and fallback automation . options are available for exchange sharepoint and bare metal recovery . 31 actifio gateway edit the actifio gateway is an appliance with no native storage capacity that virtualizes capacity for various vendors into a single storage pool that can be scaled up to eight petabytes . leadership edit ash ashutosh edit actifio was founded by ash ashutosh who had previously served as chief technologist at hp s storageworks division a position he took after hp acquired another ashutosh startup appiq in 2005 . ashutosh holds an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering and a master s degree in computer science from penn state university . after working for lsi and intergraph he joined storagenetworks . later he founded serano systems a fiber channel controller manufacturer that he sold to vitesse semiconductor . 32 his next venture was appiq which was acquired by hp in 2005 . 33 34 after leaving hp in 2008 ashutosh became a venture capitalist at greylock partners where he was an investor in information technology companies and ultimately founded actifio . 35 3 he left greylock in 2009 to focus full time on actifio serving as its president and ceo . 3 as ceo of actifio ashutosh has pursued a strategy of hiring multiple former ceos for leadership positions . ashutosh said i don t need to micro manage them . i don t need to worry about the tactics they use . as of june 2014 actifio had eight former ceos on staff . ashutosh also said that clear accountability is important . he stated the buck has to stop somewhere . it can t all be in a committee of five . i will take the fall if it doesn t go right . i need people who see that . i ask them to check their ceo badge at the door . 36 as of 2013 ashutosh was an entrepreneur in residence at harvard business school . he also lectures at the massachusetts institute of technology . 37