Cloud Data Startup Snowflake Lands $45 Million in New Funding, Offers First Product

Cloud data warehousing received a boost this week when startup Snowflake Computing, helmed by former Microsoft (MSFT) top executive Bob Muglia, landed $45 million in Series C funding, bringing the three-year old, San Mateo, CA company’s total backing to $65 million, according to Crunchbase.

“Data warehousing is ripe for disruptive innovation driven by the shift to cloud computing and the explosion of customer interest in data insights,” said Muglia.

Muglia left Microsoft in January, 2011 after 22 years on the job, most prominently as president of the vendor’s Servers and Tools Business unit, exiting as Microsoft turned its future to the cloud. Networking provider Juniper (JNPR) subsequently hired Muglia as Software Solutions Division executive vice president ahead of his move a year ago to run Snowflake.

Snowflake’s Elastic Data Warehouse, unveiled last October, is a data analytics and storage service running in the cloud the vendor delivers as a SaaS offering, with users paying only for services consumed. Snowflake made the service generally available on June 23.

“The overwhelmingly positive market reception to the Snowflake Elastic Data Warehouse has validated our vision of reimagining the data warehouse for the cloud era with a completely new product built from the cloud up that doesn’t require retooling and retraining,” said Muglia. “This funding will support further innovation made possible by the product’s unique architecture, as well as accelerate our customer and revenue growth.”

Muglia told Re/code that so far 80 customers have signed up to use Snowflake with some 20 progressing beyond the testing phase.

Snowflake’s latest funding round was led by Altimeter Capital along with capital from Redpoint, Sutter Hill and Wing Ventures.

“The cloud is reshaping the enterprise software landscape,” said Kevin Wang, Altimeter Capital partner. “Snowflake is breathing new life into the data warehousing market by delivering cloud-based innovation with a world-class team, ambitious vision and differentiated product,” he said. “This is a transformative company, and we’re excited to support Snowflake as they reshape the data warehousing and data analytics markets.”

Muglia said that while the cloud has changed data warehousing, “simply ‘cloud-washing’ a conventional data warehouse misses that opportunity. Organizations want to get more value from their data, not simply bring their current challenges into the cloud, or worse, create problems by deploying complex solutions that force them to retrain their staff and abandon existing tools and processes. From day one, Snowflake has had a singular focus on reinventing the data warehouse, building from the cloud up to solve the data analysis needs of customers.”