Funding

AppSense Raises Its First Round Of Funding: $70 Million From Goldman Sachs

February 23, 2011 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

User virtualization specialist AppSense has raised $70 million from Goldman Sachs (via TechCrunch).

User virtualization solves many of the complex technical issues around delivering a consistent environment in any environment (e.g. working from home, buying your own computer) and across any device including smartphones, iPads and other tablets.

From an enterprise perspective, it also allows IT to reduce the cost of maintenance and major upgrades, such as Windows 7 migration, reduce the time it takes users to log on and speed up the delivery of applications regardless of whether they are locally stored or cloud-based.

The software also enables them to retain control from a security perspective, without restricting the user by imposing a “lockdown” policy.

AppSense says it is already profitable and growing rapidly. Last year its turnover was $47 million, a 60% increase on the previous year.

In 2010, AppSense signed up more than 4,000 enterprise and government customers around the world, including major companies like BT, ESPN, JPMorgan Chase and United Airlines.

Last year, AppSense says it sold some 1.5 million user licenses, comprising a partnership with Fujitsu to provide desktop management solutions to the Department for Work and Pensions for more than 1,000 locations and over 140,000 users in the UK.

SolidFire Scores $11 Million For Cloud Computing Storage Platform

February 3, 2011 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

SolidFire, which is building a ‘next-generation’ cloud computing storage platform, has raised $11 million in Series A funding led by New Enterprise Associates with current investors Valhalla Partners and Novak Biddle Venture Partners joining the round (via TechCrunch).

The startup will be launching a beta product ‘later this year’. SolidFire will be using the capital to expand by hiring new people and the opening of an office in Boulder, Colorado.

SolidFire was founded by Dave Wright, who earlier founded Jungle Disk, which leverages Rackspace and Amazon S3 infrastructures to provides reliable, virtually unlimited scalability for any level of data storage. Jungle Disk was acquired by Rackspace in October 2008. Prior to Jungle Disk, he was Chief Architect at IGN / GameSpy / Fox Interactive Media.

In conjunction with the funding round, NEA General Partner Harry Weller will join SolidFire’s board of directors alongside Valhalla GP Charles Curran, and Novak Biddle GP Phil Bronner. Also joining the SolidFire board is former LeftHand Networks CEO Bill Chambers.

Cloud Automation Solutions Provider Skytap Lands $10 Million

December 31, 2010 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Skytap, which provides cloud automation solutions for enterprises and software vendors to securely develop, test and demo cloud applications, has raised $10 million in a third round of financing, according to an SEC filing.

This brings the total amount of financing raised by the company to $23 million.

Skytap enables users to run enterprise applications in the cloud, collaborate with global teams and gain business productivity. Additionally, IT organizations can gain visibility and control over cloud projects, align capacity with demand and reduce costs.

Enterprises can also connect Skytap to their data centers and create virtual private clouds.

(Source: TechCrunchIT)

Cloud Storage Startup Nasuni Raises $15 Million In Series B Financing

December 20, 2010 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Nasuni this morning announced that it has closed $15 million in Series B funding led by Flybridge Capital Partners with participation from existing investors, North Bridge Venture Partners and Sigma Partners, who led the company’s Series A funding in March 2009. Investment in Nasuni now totals $23 million for the two rounds.

Chip Hazard, a General Partner at Flybridge Capital Partners, has been named to the Nasuni Board of Directors. Jeffrey P. McCarthy, Partner at North Bridge, and Paul Flanagan, Managing Director with Sigma Partners, represent the current investors.

Nasuni develops the Nasuni Filer, a file server that leverages the cloud to change the way companies store their files. The Nasuni Filer runs as a virtual appliance and can be downloaded for free.

It delivers primary storage, indistinguishable from local storage, from an array of leading cloud storage providers. Now in its second generation, the Nasuni Filer eliminates lengthy file server migrations and the need for backups.

“We spent the last year building a loyal customer base and that proved invaluable during the fundraising,” said Nasuni CEO Andres Rodriguez. “We are now working with partners to leverage our sales capability. The time for utility storage has arrived and Nasuni is rushing to help companies make the transition. Chip Hazard is the kind of visionary investor who believed in that vision a decade ago. We want to delight customers by continuing to deliver a great service that radically simplifies file management.”

(Source: press release)

Actifio Raises $8 Million Series A Round To Address Data Management Virtualization

July 21, 2010 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Actifio, the emerging leader in Data Management Virtualization (DMV), today announced $8 million in Series A financing (via TechCrunchIT).

The funds will be used to market Actifio’s patent-pending technology which transforms individual data management application silos into a unified, virtualized, highly efficient solution for data protection, disaster recovery and business continuity.

This financing was led by North Bridge Venture Partners and Greylock Partners.

With the funds, Actifio will expand its sales channel, and invest in marketing to drive market share for its next-generation data management solutions.

Server virtualization technologies from Citrix, Microsoft and VMware, along with solutions from Cisco, Dell, HP, IBM and others have enabled the transformation of the computing infrastructure into an efficient, dynamic computing resource. However, the storage infrastructure continues to be a major bottleneck in this transformation, with data lifecycle management shackled by point tools that are deployed in silos – creating complexity, inflexibility and at a significant expense.

Purpose-built to radically simplify and deliver unprecedented agility, Actifio’s DMV technology reduces the real cost of managing the application data lifecycle and virtualizes vendor-independent physical or cloud-based storage devices into a private, public or hybrid storage cloud infrastructure.

The newly funded organization has an all-star leadership team with deep-domain expertise in building successful companies and emerging technologies that deliver unprecedented value to customers and partners on a global scale. The Actifio executive team includes:

Ash Ashutosh, president and CEO (formerly vice president & chief technologist of HP’s StorageWorks division and founder, CEO and CTO of AppIQ and Serano Systems)
David Chang, vice president of products (formerly founder and vice president of product management at AppIQ)
Steven Blumenau, vice president of marketing (formerly vice president, digital archive sales at Iron Mountain; senior director of advanced development at EMC, and founder and CEO of Avalere)
Rick Nagengast, vice president of sales (formerly vice president channel and partner development of EMC and GM of Storage Products Division of DEC and Compaq)
James Pownell, customer operations manager (formerly founder and president of Exagrid Systems; founder and vice president of engineering Highground Software and development manager at EMC)