Sweet sticky Canuck cash flows into StrongBox

Quebecois' savings are being wagered on the success of a Montreal-based data management firm via a venture fund that aims to boost local biz.

StrongBox Data Solutions (SBDS) is a privately owned, multi-vendor data management and tiering company. It was bought out by CEO David Cerf in March 2016 from ETI-NET, which had bought Strongbox and Sphinx products from crashed and burning Crossroads.

Its main product is StrongLink, which does stored data metadata harvesting and then data movement across tiers.

Now the Canada-based Fonds de solidarité FTQ, a C$13bn development capital investment fund, has put $20m into SBDS' parent company, along with $7m from Partner One Capital, which is SBDS' controlling shareholder. FTQ is Québec’s largest central labour body and the Fonds calls itself a "social investor" in Quebec-based businesses.

SBDS CEO David Cerf would have it otherwise: "The investment by the Fonds de solidarité FTQ validates the global response from our customers who have discovered that StrongLink can reduce storage costs and operational complexity."

He added: "The support of such a major investment firm gives us the ability to increase worldwide deployments, which have already proven very successful at major customer sites across the globe."

The cash will be used to help the worldwide expansion of StrongBox. ®