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Industry heavyweights back OrionVM

Widely accepted father of the minicomputer, Gordon Bell, and Pipe Networks co-founder Stephen Baxter have become the latest duo to back OrionVM as angel investors.
Written by Michael Lee, Contributor

Widely accepted father of the minicomputer, Gordon Bell, and Pipe Networks co-founder Stephen Baxter have become the latest duo to back OrionVM as angel investors.

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(Cloud computing image by Damien Pollet, CC BY 2.0)

The cloud infrastructure start-up offers a computing and storage services platform over the web that has previously outperformed Amazon in several areas. It is run and founded by managing director Sheng Yeo and his two friends, Joseph Glanville and Alex Sharp, all university students, who launched the business in early 2010.

Bell, who has worked as a researcher in Silicon Valley for a number of years, has had a profound influence on modern technology, focusing on telepresence as early as 1995, when he joined Microsoft, and creating the VAX computing environment while heading up research and development at Digital Equipment Corporation.

Baxter, who co-founded Pipe Networks in 2001, took his company to the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX), and had grown it to the value of over $370 million by the time it was snapped up by TPG in 2010. OrionVM hopes to tap into his experience in running and growing a tech business.

Yeo said that the largest gain to the company would not be the money that the two investors would bring, but rather their knowledge and experience, and said that he is "proud and honoured to have industry leaders like Gordon and Stephen show faith in OrionVM".

The money will enable the company to double its staff, with OrionVM expecting customer usage to triple. Yeo also said that it would allow the company to explore developing an international presence.

The move to target a global market appears to have been on the company's mind for a while. After the company took out the $25,000 broadband innovation award at Tech23, it said that it would look at overseas expansion to generate $1 million in capital.

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