"Unfortunately some of our investors have asked us to find a new partner in funding the company, so we've made adjustments in our staff to find the room we need," said Samantha Stone, vice president of marketing, in an interview Wednesday. "Our intention is to continue operating."

The Cambridge, Massachusetts, company now has 23 employees, down from 60, she said. The company "dramatically cut" its marketing department, but also let some developers go, Stone said.

However, the vendor was careful to maintain the support staff and developers needed to continue serving existing customers, as well as proceed with new feature development, she added.

The company has "made some adjustments" to long-term initiatives in its product road map, according to Stone, though she declined to provide specifics. But it is "moving forward on performance enhancements and mixed workload capabilities," she added.

Dataupia's Satori Server appliance combines servers, storage and optimization software. One of the vendor's main selling points is the fact that Satori can work with and augment the performance of multiple databases, such as Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server.

The vendor, which competes with the likes of Netezza, Vertica and others, has seven publicly named customers, who could not immediately be reached Wednesday.

Stone declined to discuss how Dataupia is faring so far in its search for additional funding. US venture capital investment has dropped considerably in recent months amid the global recession, according to one recent industry report.

Dataupia's future is questionable, according to analyst Curt Monash of Monash Research.

"There's going to be a shake-out in the [data warehousing] market and I see little reason to expect Dataupia to be one of the survivors," he said. "This is difficult technology to build, and I don't think they have the resources. Twenty-three people is not enough."

However, at the right price, Dataupia "might be an appealing acquisition for some vertically focused company," he added.