Marathon Gets VC Funds For High-Availability Server Software
George Tranos, president and CEO of Marathon, said the company had earlier investments from individuals and small companies, but this round of funding came from venture capital firms Atlas Venture, Longworth Venture Partners and Presidio Venture Partners.
The funds will be used to launch new products, build its channel and strengthen marketing, sales and service organizations, he said.
Historically, for high-availability servers, customers had to go with proprietary vendors, said Tranos. However, Marathon's software can be used with industry-standard servers to create fault-tolerant solutions, he said.
The company's software in the past required four servers to build fault tolerance: two servers to simultaneously run applications, and two servers to act as interconnects. If a fault is detected in one of the servers, the application continues to run without disruption while the faulty server is replaced.
In the newest version of the software, released just recently, only two servers with two processors each are required for fault tolerance, said Tranos. The software currently works with Windows NT and Windows 2000, but a version for Windows Server 2003 supporting Pentium processors with Hyper threading is expected next quarter, he said.
Marathon sells exclusively through the channel, and currently has seven vertical and three horizontal partners worldwide. Tranos said the company is focusing on getting those 10 partners up-to-date on the product, and will look to recruit more channel partners as well as a couple of OEM partners shortly thereafter.
Price for the software starts at about $12,000, with channel discounts starting at about 30 percent, said Tranos.