Skyera, a start-up vendor of solid-state storage systems, has closed US$51.6m in financing in a round by a group of investors led by Dell Ventures. This is the company's second round of institutional capital.

Skyera market's its storage systems to enterprises that need high-performing energy efficient storage. Examples of appropriate applications are cloud infrastructure, big-data analytics, mobility and social networking.

The company said it will use the investment to accelerate the integration of latest-generation flash technology and drive broader adoption of its solutions.

Skyera’s skyHawk storage systems are not in general availability yet. They use 19/20-nanometer solid-state technology, which the company says can be used as a direct replacement for traditional enterprise hard-disk-based systems, priced at less than $3 per gigabyte.

Radoslav Danilak, founder and CEO of Skyera, said, “Dell and the investment syndicate bring deep knowledge of the storage sector that will be beneficial to Skyera as we take our next steps.”

Marius Haas, president of Dell's Enterprise Solutions Group, said Skyera's technology was innovative across the board in storage, including controllers, memory and software. “We are focused on changing the economics of storage and other systems for our customers by bringing high-end enterprise features to the broad mid-market and solving enterprise problems at a mid-range price point,” he said.