Fremont's Panasas raises $32 million in third-round funding

Storage technology startup Panasas Inc. has secured $32 million in a thirdround funding led by Centennial Ventures.

The Fremont company has now raised a total of $72.5 million. In addition to Centennial Ventures, other contributors to this round include Carlyle Venture Partners, Evercore Ventures and Mohr Davidow Ventures, all of which are returning investors. Intel Capital and Novak-Biddle join as new investors.

Panasas joins a crowd of other startups in the market for network attached storage devices.

The market leaders are Network Appliance of Sunnyvale and EMC Corp. of Hopkinton, Mass., which together control about 85 percent of the market.

Network attached storage companies make equipment called file servers, which allow multiple employees or computer programs to have access to a common file.

Instead of all those employees...