Nimble Storage, a fast-growing developer of storage technology based on flash solutions that is backed by major venture capital firms to the tune of nearly $100 million, has opened an office in RTP.

And the company is hiring.

The operation is the first on the East Coast for Nimble, which is based in Silicon Valley. It manufactures storage arrays equipped with proprietary software.

Nimble, which was founded in 2008 and began shipping hardware in 2010, says it helps clients reduce costs and also space needed for storage. With more than 1,000 customers, Nimble says it has exceeded a $100 million run rate for the fourth quarter that ended in January. More than 2,000 of its storage arrays have been sold. 

Backers include Sequoia Capital, Light Speed and ACCEL Partners. Nimble closed on a $40.7 million oversubscribed round of financing last September.

Nimble cracked The Wall Street Journal’s The Next Big Thing list in 2012, was a finalist for the Storage Magazine/SearchStorage Product of the Year Finalist, and made the CRN Emerging Vendor list. 

The office is located at 4813 Emperor Blvd.

The firm has secured enough space to house up to 100 workers, and it is looking for engineering as well as customer support and sales personnel. Nimble currently employs some 350 people and is quickly staffing up its RTP operation.

One of the reasons Nimble chose to locate in the Triangle was due to the talent pool created in part by the region’s universities.

“This key investment in the East Coast region enables Nimble Storage to further its leadership in the global storage industry,” said Suresh Vasudevan, the firm’s chief executive officer. “We are pleased to be contributing to the local economy and look forward to benefiting from the excellent technology talent-pool of the Raleigh community.”

Nimble also recently expanded in the Pacific, opening officers in Australia and Singapore.

The firm positions its flash-based technology as an alternative to traditional storage. It has patented an architecture that it calls Cache Accelerated Sequential Layout.

CASL enables Nimble to “accelerate access to application data by caching a copy of active hot data and metadata in flash for reads” which enables “high throughput and low latency on read transactions from storage.”

Cisco, VMware, Microsoft and Citrix are among firms that have certified Nimble’s technology.

The company also offers related services.