Rancher Labs, a startup developing Docker infrastructure software, today announced $10M in Series A funding from Mayfield and Nexus Venture Partners. With the rapid adoption of container technology, the company’s open source software has grown in popularity by allowing organizations to run containers in production, across any cloud. The funding will be allocated to furthering product development and expanding the company’s engineering and development teams.
“Containers are quickly becoming the de-facto large-scale production platform for application deployment,” said Sheng Liang, co-founder and CEO of Rancher Labs. “Our goal is to provide organizations with the tools needed to take full advantage of container technology. By developing storage and networking software purpose-built for containers, we are providing organizations with the best possible experience for running Docker in production. As we prepare for the upcoming launch of our flagship Rancher product, we are thrilled to be partnering with investors who truly believe in our unique vision.”
Rancher’s growth has come as containers are fundamentally changing the way infrastructure is consumed. Based on the technology’s current requirements, Rancher is developing innovative solutions for container infrastructure, including networking, load balancing, monitoring and storage, designed specifically for containers. With this new approach, Rancher makes it easier for organizations to adopt Docker, deploy it anywhere and manage it in production.
“Software containers have dramatically changed the way DevOps teams work, becoming an essential piece of today’s IT infrastructure,” said Jishnu Bhattacharjee, managing director at Nexus Venture Partners. “The team at Rancher Labs recognized the technology’s potential early on, along with the pain points associated with it. With their dedication to bridging the subsequent gaps and providing a solution which eases the management of containers in production, we are thrilled to be partnering back with Sheng and team and help build another category leading company after Cloud.com.”
Rancher was founded by the team behind Cloud.com, maker of the Apache CloudStack software, which was acquired by Citrix® in 2011. The founding leadership team includes Sheng Liang as chief executive officer, Shannon Williams as vice president of sales and marketing, Darren Shepherd as chief architect and Will Chan as vice president of engineering.
“I’m excited to champion Sheng, a peer first generation cloud entrepreneur, and Shannon, as they build Rancher into the defining infrastructure company of the container era,” said Ursheet Parikh, Mayfield partner and former CEO of StorSimple, which was acquired by Microsoft. “The full stack from Rancher Labs will deliver the environment for containers to proliferate in production.”
