The presentation provides an overview of Nimble Storage for investors. Key points include: - Nimble Storage has seen rapid revenue growth and an expanding customer base due to its CASL flash-optimized file system and InfoSight cloud-based management platform. - CASL delivers significantly better performance and capacity efficiency than traditional storage systems, while InfoSight enables predictive support and simple operations management. - Nimble has a large market opportunity and sees continued growth driven by new customers, expanding use by existing customers, and increasing deal sizes on average. - The company is investing aggressively in R&D and sales/marketing to capitalize on the opportunity while demonstrating improving operating leverage and moving toward

1. Investor Presentation
Suresh Vasudevan, Chief Executive Officer
Anup Singh, Chief Financial Officer
January 2014

2. Safe Harbor
This presentation and the accompanying oral presentation contain “forward-looking” statements that are based on our management’s beliefs and assumptions and on information currently
available to management. We intend for such forward-looking statements to be covered by the safe harbor provisions for forward-looking statements contained in the U.S. Private Securities
Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements include all statements other than statements of historical fact contained in this presentation, including information concerning our
business plans and objectives, potential growth opportunities, competitive position, industry environment and potential market opportunities.
Forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other factors including, but not limited to, those related to our future financial performance,
market acceptance of our solutions, our ability to increase sales of our solutions, including to attract and retain customers and to selling additional solutions to our existing customers, our ability
to develop new solutions and bring them to market in a timely manner, pricing pressure (as a result of competition or otherwise), our ability to maintain, protect and enhance our brand and
intellectual property, and our ability to continue to expand our business and manage our growth. Moreover, we operate in very competitive and rapidly changing environments, and new risks
may emerge from time to time. It is not possible for our management to predict all risks, nor can we assess the impact of all factors on our business or the extent to which any factor, or
combination of factors, may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statements we may make. Further information on these and other factors that
could affect our financial results are included in our filings we make with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and may cause our actual results, performance or achievements to differ
materially and adversely from those anticipated or implied by our forward-looking statements.
You should not rely upon forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. Although our management believes that the expectations reflected in our forward-looking statements are
reasonable, we cannot guarantee that the future results, levels of activity, performance or events and circumstances described in the forward-looking statements will be achieved or occur.
Moreover, neither we, nor any other person, assume responsibility for the accuracy and completeness of the forward-looking statements. We undertake no obligation to publicly update any
forward-looking statements for any reason after the date of this presentation to conform these statements to actual results or to changes in our expectations, except as required by law.
In addition to GAAP financial information, this presentation includes certain non-GAAP financial measures. The non-GAAP measures have limitations and you should not consider them in
isolation or as a substitute for our GAAP financial information. There are limitations to the use of non-GAAP measures. For example, bookings and free cash flow are not substitutes for
revenues or cash provided by operations. In addition, non-GAAP operating expenses exclude the impact of stock-based compensation expense, which is a recurring expense for us. See the
Appendix for a reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to their nearest GAAP equivalent.
1

3. Founding Thesis: Opportunity for a Ground-Up Design of Storage
Umesh
Maheshwari
Founder, CTO
DAS
Monolithic
Storage
Modular
Storage
1980s
1990s
2000s
Suresh
Vasudevan
CEO
Varun Mehta
Founder, VP of
Engineering
Flash
Cloud
Today
2

4. Investment Highlights and Nimble Storage Snapshot
Disruptive platform built on two foundational innovations:
Cumulative Customer Base
2,121
 CASL, flash-optimized file system
 InfoSight, cloud-based management
780
$18B market opportunity*
Significant and broad-based traction
 Diverse base of enterprises and service providers
 Broad set of workloads
174
Q3FY12
Q3FY13
Q3FY14
Revenue Growth
$84.0
Exceptional revenue growth with scalable margin profile
$53.8
+284%
Experienced technology and management team
*Source: Based on company estimates from IDC and Gartner data
+150%
$33.7
$14.0
$1.7
FY11
FY12
FY13
9MoFY13
9MoFY14
3

5. Flash and Disk are Complementary
The key is to efficiently optimize both performance and capacity, and be flexible and
media-agnostic as flash and disk evolve over time
Component
Flash
Disk
Random IOPS/$
30-100X
1X
Sequential IO/$
1X
3X
Need for Flash Varies Greatly
Analytics
VDI
File/Print
Capacity/$
1X
15X
Endurance
Poor
Proven
OLTP
Archives
Low
High
4

6. Enterprises Today are Overwhelmed
Exacerbating Trends
Virtualization
Cloud Computing
Poor Application
Performance
Compute
Network
Storage
20X
10X
Same
Mobility
Increasing Demands
of Data Growth
Big Data
Social and Collaboration
VM / Application Data
Management Complexity
CRM
%*
40-45
CAGR
ERP
CRM
ERP
*Source: IDC, The Digital Universe in 2020, sponsored by EMC
5

7. Our Innovative Platform
CASL
InfoSight
Flash-optimized
file system software
Cloud-based
management
Efficiency
Scale-to-Fit
Integrated Protection
Ease of Operations
Significantly better
performance/$ and capacity/$
Non-disruptive, flexible
scaling to massive scale
Rapid backup
and recovery
Predictive support and
operational simplicity
6

8. CASL: Designed from the Ground Up
Operating
Systems
Hypervisors
Key Decisions in
Ground-Up Design
Application
Integration
 Leverage flash for
performance?
Replication
Snapshots
Compression
Cloning
Thin Provisioning
Multi-tenancy
File System
Software
How do we:
Data Management
Functionality
 Leverage disk for capacity?
 Be media-agnostic and
flexible as the relative merits
of flash and disk evolve?
 Leapfrog incumbents on data
management?
7

9. CASL: A Breakthrough File System
Traditional File Systems / Tiering
Nimble Advantage
CASL Innovations
Fixed blocks:
No compression
Inline Compression,
using variable blocks
Uses 30-70% less disk and
flash resources
Fast random writes
need a flash tier
Inline Serialization of
all incoming write IO
Uses low-cost HDDs to deliver
SSD-like write performance
Fast reads by migrating
between tiers wastes flash
More Flash
More Disk
Dynamic Caching to
serve reads from flash
SSD (Flash) Cache
Disk
Uses substantially less, lowcost flash to accelerate reads
Copy-based snapshots
waste capacity and
degrade performance
Pointer-Based
Snapshots
Integrated, rapid backup
and recovery
Scale-Up OR
Limited Scale-Out
Scale-to-Fit: Scale-up,
deep and scale-out
Non-disruptive scaling
in least-cost increments
CASL is more performance and capacity efficient and easy to scale, while delivering integrated data protection
8

10. Transforming Storage Efficiency at a Large Bank
Challenges
 Storage costs were 30% of
the capital budget
Competitor Hybrid
Disk-Flash Solution
•
•
Nimble
6 Racks
Phase 1:
Exchange
½ Rack
 Core project drivers:
•
VS.
Performance scaling
Storage budget
Datacenter footprint
3 Racks
Phase 2:
SQL
Databases
¾ Rack
Nimble Advantage
 1.5x usable capacity and 50%
lower capital costs
 10x lower power and cooling costs
 Dramatically simpler storage
management
 2.5x performance and 2x usable
capacity at much lower capital costs
 75% lower power and cooling costs
 Dramatically simpler storage
management
9

11. Transforming Data Protection at a Global Consulting Firm
Challenges
Rethinking infrastructure at
all of their 11 sites
Aging storage infrastructure in
their main data centers:
Boston and Chicago
Inadequate data protection in
9 remote sites:
•
•
Tapes for backup
Offsite tape copies for disaster recovery
Nimble Approach
9 Remote Sites
 Nimble chosen as the platform
for all 11 sites
 Each site protected with hourly
snapshots for rapid recovery
 Data replicated between offices
for cost-effective and simple DR
 Significant savings on storage and
bandwidth
Boston
Data Center
Chicago
Data Center
10

12. Traditional Storage Management is Inefficient and Expensive
Existing Approach
!
?
#
Q&A
Diagnostics
Logs
Vendor Support
Customers
11

13. Traditional Storage Management is Inefficient and Expensive
Existing Approach
?! #
Vendor
 In a connected world
why can’t vendors
proactively monitor
customer deployed
systems?
 With modern data
analytics tools
can vendors predict
and prevent problems
before they occur?
x1,000s of Customers
12

14. InfoSight: Cloud-Based Management
Nimble Approach
Customer Benefits
Comprehensive
Telemetry
Storage Management
SaaS Offering
 Between 12 and 70M
sensors per array, daily
 Monitoring and alerting
 Data collected every 5
minutes and on-demand
Analysis and
Automation
 Systems modeling
 Correlations, trending,
and projections
 Visualization, capacity
planning, performance
management
Proactive Wellness
 Vast majority of cases
opened by Nimble
 Secure, on-demand
system access
Leveraging pervasive network connectivity and big data analytics to automate support and enable cloud-based management
13

15. InfoSight Impact In Q3FY14
Proactive Support Prevents Problems
92%
of the cases
automatically
opened by Nimble
82%
of support cases
auto-closed
by Nimble
Predicting Customers’ Storage Expansion Needs
106
customers
expanded capacity
20
customers
expanded flash
7
customers
upgraded controllers
Product Insights Enhance Competitiveness
 CS210 platform enhancements
 Numerous performance enhancements
14

16. Market Response Has Led to Rapid Growth in Our Installed Base
Cumulative Customer Base
Large Enterprises*
2,121
+235%
Q3FY12
780
Q3FY13
Q3FY14
Service Providers
174
Q3FY12
+292%
Q3FY13
*Company estimates of Global 5,000 customers
Q3FY14
Q3FY12
Q3FY13
Q3FY14
15

17. Broad Appeal
Q3 Diversified Workloads*
9 Months FY14 Diversified Market Verticals
13%
19%
90%
High Tech
Other
80%
13%
70%
4%
60%
Financial
Services
Legal
4%
50%
Energy
40%
6%
30%
11%
Service
Provider
20%
Education
7%
Manufacturing
10%
0%
VMware
SQL
Exchange File / Print
VDI
Sharepoint HyperV
Oracle
Web Apps
7%
Healthcare
7%
Services
9%
State/Local
Gov’t
*Y axis represents % of systems in the field that handle this type of workload
16

18. Land and Expand Strategy: 2-Year Bookings After Initial Sale
Name
Customer1
Q3-2011
Q4-2011
Q1-2012
Q2-2012
Q3-2012
Q4-2012
Q1-2013
Q2-2013
Q3-2013
Q4-2013
Q1-2014
Q2-2014
Q3-2014
Customer2
Customer3
Customer4
Customer5
Customer6
Customer7
Customer8
Customer9
Customer10
Customer11
Customer12
Customer13
Customer14
Customer15
Customer16
Customer17
Customer18
Customer19
Customer20
Customer21
Customer22
Customer23
Customer24
Customer25
Customer26
Customer27
Customer28
Average: All Customers
Top 50 Customers*
Customer29
4.36X
Customer30
Customer31
Customer32
Customer33
Customer34
Customer35
2.23X
Customer36
Customer37
Customer38
Customer39
Customer40
Customer41
Customer42
1X
1X
Customer43
Customer44
Customer45
Customer46
Customer47
Customer48
Customer49
Initial Sale
Total: Year 1 and 2
Initial Sale
Total: Year 1 and 2
Customer50
Note: Bookings defined as a purchase order received; statistics as of Oct 31, 2013
* Top 50 of all customers that have been Nimble Storage customers for 4 or more quarters; Of the 50, 19 customers have 8 quarters of history, as described in the Registration Statement
17

19. Highly Leveraged Go to Market Approach
>780 cumulative channel partners
786
 813 channel sales reps and
channel SEs trained in
the first 9 months of FY14
 50% of opportunities in the
328
first 9 months of FY14
originated by channel
85
Q3FY12
Q3FY13
Q3FY14
18

20. Competitive Landscape
Legacy
Modern
Monolithic
Flash in Server
All-Flash Arrays
(e.g., VMAX)
Modular
Dell EQL/CML
EMC VNX
NetApp FAS
HP 3PAR
Tape; Low-cost
RAID/NAS
Real-Time
Analytics
Mainstream
Applications
VDI
File/Print
OLTP
Flash-Optimized Hybrid
Exchange
CRM
SQL
Archives
Tape; Low-cost RAID;
NAS; Object Storage
19

21. Financial Highlights
Strong revenue growth with an attractive and expanding margin profile
Significant “land and expand” opportunity
Investments to expand differentiation and capitalize on large market opportunity
Improving operating leverage and cash flow from operations
Attractive long term financial model
20

22. Rapid Revenue Growth
Annual and Last 9 Months Revenue*
Quarterly Revenue
$84.0
$53.8
+ 284
$33.4
+ 150%
$28.5
%
$20.2
$33.7
$22.1
$14.6
$8.2
$14.0
$11.0
$1.7
FY11
FY12
FY13
Product Revenue
9MoFY13
9MoFY14
Support and Service Revenue
Q1FY13
Q2FY13
Q3FY13
Product Revenue
Q4FY13
Q1FY14
Q2FY14
Q3FY14
Support and Service Revenue
*Fiscal year ends on January 31
21

23. Growth Drivers
Customers
Land and Expand
Deal Size
Cumulative Customer Base
2-Year Bookings* After Initial Sale
Average Across All Customers
Q3 FY14 Average Deal Size
2,121
223
69
200
100
100
54
18% Growth vs. PY
0
Initial Sale
customers
New
customers
174
Q3FY13
Year 2
Total
% New vs. Existing Customer Bookings
%
Existing
780
Q3FY12
Year 1
Q3FY14
26
7
4
%
32%
9MoFY13
68%
9MoFY14
% of Bookings by Deal Size
<$100k
$100k - $250K
>$250k
4%
24
%
10%
72%
9MoFY13
Sales
29%
61%
9MoFY14
*Defined as a purchase order received; statistics as of Oct 31, 2013
22

24. Attractive Gross Margin Profile
Annual and Last 9 Months Gross Margin*
Product and Support and Service Gross Margin*
67.5%
65.2%
64.5%
62.3%
36.9%
30.6%
55.5%
FY12
FY13
9MoFY14
9MoFY13
Product Gross Margin
9MoFY14
Support and Service Gross Margin
*Gross Margin is a Non-GAAP financial measure, see appendix for reconciliation
23

25. Investing Aggressively for Continued Growth
Research and Development*
157
55%
~3X
51
$8
Q4FY12
Q3FY14
FY12
Head Count
$15
FY13
$22
9MoFY14
28%
FY12
$ Millions
FY13
26%
9MoFY14
% of Revenue
Sales and Marketing*
276
~3X
$39
75
$49
90%
72%
59%
$13
Q4FY12
Q3FY14
Head Count
FY12
FY13
$ Millions
9MoFY14
FY12
FY13
9MoFY14
% of Revenue
*Research and Development and Sales and Marketing are Non-GAAP financial measures, see appendix for reconciliation
24

26. Demonstrating Operating Leverage
Improving Operating Margin*
FY12
FY13
9MoFY14
Cash Flow From Operations and
Free Cash Flow % of Revenue **
Q1FY13
Q2FY13
Q3FY13
Q4FY13
Q1FY14
Q2FY14
Q3FY14
-1%
-15%
-29%
-47%
v
-75%
-83%
Cash From Operations as
% of Revenue
-114%
Free Cash Flow as % of
Revenue
*Operating
**Free
Margin is a Non-GAAP financial measure, see appendix for reconciliation
cash flow is defined as net cash from operating activities plus cash used to purchase property and equipment
25

27. Business Model
FY13
9 Months FY14
Long-Term Model
Gross Margin*
62%
65%
63%–65%
R&D as % of Revenue*
28%
26%
11%–13%
S&M as % of Revenue*
72%
59%
28%–31%
G&A as % of Revenue*
9%
9%
5%–6%
-47%
-29%
16%–20%
Non-GAAP Operating Margin*
*Gross Margin, R&D, S&M, G&A and Operating Margin are Non-GAAP financial measures, see appendix for reconciliation
26

28. Our Strategic Priorities
Customers
Technology Platform
Continue expansion into
large enterprise and service
provider customers
Build on our broad technology
foundation to further extend our
differentiation, broaden feature coverage,
and further expand our target market
Sales and Marketing
People
Invest aggressively to deepen
sales coverage within existing territories,
expand internationally, and drive continued
channel leverage
Build best-in-class company
founded on recruiting and retaining
the industry’s best talent
27

29. Positioned To Lead In the Flash-Optimized Storage Era
1980s
1990s
2000s
Today
DAS
Monolithic Storage
Modular Storage
Flash-Optimized Storage
Providing Our Customers with the
Industry’s Most Efficient Data Storage Platform
28

30. Appendix

31. GAAP to Non-GAAP Reconciliation
($ in thousands)
GAAP Product Gross Profit
FY12
FY13
9MoFY13
9MoFY14
7,880
32,499
20,282
50,955
% GAAP Product Gross Margin
60.1%
65.3%
65.1%
67.4%
(+) Stock-based Compensation
10
48
19
130
Non-GAAP Product Gross Profit
7,890
32,547
20,301
51,085
60.2%
65.4%
65.2%
67.5%
(145)
891
695
2,828
-16.1%
21.9%
27.5%
33.8%
31
114
77
258
(114)
1,005
772
3,086
-12.7%
24.7%
30.6%
36.9%
7,735
33,390
20,977
53,783
55.2%
62.0%
62.3%
64.0%
41
162
96
388
7,776
33,552
21,073
54,171
55.5%
62.3%
62.6%
64.5%
Non-GAAP Product Gross Margin
GAAP Support and Service Gross Profit
% GAAP Support and Service Gross Margin
(+) Stock-based Compensation
Non-GAAP Support and Service Gross Profit
Non-GAAP Support and Service Gross Margin
GAAP Gross Profit
% GAAP Gross Margin
(+) Stock-based Compensation
Non-GAAP Gross Profit
% Non-GAAP Gross Margin
30

32. GAAP to Non-GAAP Reconciliation
($ in thousands)
FY12
FY13
9MoFY13
9MoFY14
GAAP Research and Development
(-) Stock-based Compensation
Non-GAAP Research and Development
7,903
268
7,635
16,135
874
15,261
11,015
579
10,436
23,737
1,695
22,042
GAAP Sales and Marketing
(-) Stock-based Compensation
Non-GAAP Sales and Marketing
12,863
244
12,619
39,851
1,029
38,822
24,362
672
23,690
51,330
1,971
49,359
GAAP General and Administrative
(-) Stock-based Compensation
Non-GAAP General and Administrative
3,756
267
3,489
5,168
539
4,629
3,238
375
2,863
8,472
993
7,479
GAAP Operating Expenses
(-) Stock-based Compensation
Non-GAAP Operating Expenses
24,522
779
23,743
61,154
2,442
58,712
38,615
1,626
36,989
83,539
4,659
78,880
GAAP Operating Loss
% of Revenue
(+) Stock-based Compensation
Non-GAAP Operating Loss
% of Revenue
(16,787)
-120%
820
(15,967)
-114%
(27,764)
-52%
2,604
(25,160)
-47%
(17,638)
-52%
1,722
(15,916)
-47%
(29,756)
-35%
5,047
(24,709)
-29%
($ in thousands)
Net Cash Used in Operating Activites
% of Revenue
(-) Property and Equipment, Net
Free Cash Flow
% of Revenue
1QFY13
2QFY13
3QFY13
4QFY13
1QFY14
2QFY14
3QFY14
(6,094)
-75%
658
(6,752)
-83%
(3,648)
-33%
670
(4,318)
-39%
(5,115)
-35%
1,202
(6,316)
-43%
(3,898)
-19%
1,424
(5,322)
-26%
(4,875)
-22%
1,884
(6,759)
-31%
(3,780)
-13%
1,515
(5,295)
-19%
(272)
-1%
4,726
(4,998)
-15%
31