Category Archives: Funding

Funding, IBM, News & Analysis, Sellpoints, Stephen Gold, Watson, WayBlazer

IBM backs WayBlazer, Sellpoints to show its commitment to Watson

IBM is investing in companies that use the Watson cloud service

IBM is investing in companies that use the Watson cloud service

IBM announced this week it has invested in two companies, WayBlazer and Sellpoints, which are using cognitive computing to enhance their travel planning and shopping applications. The move seems intended to show IBM’s commitment to Watson-as-a-service, the company’s cloud-based cognitive computing service which launched last year.

WayBlazer, a travel planning and shopping service, uses IBM’s Watson cloud service to help personalise holidays and create personalised travel recommendations for each customer from a slew of social and financial data.

Sellpoint uses Watson to do much the same thing, but for large retail and manufacturing firms looking to bolster their ecommerce sites without having to invest loads by way of internal development resource.

IBM said the investments in WayBlazer and Sellpoint were part of a $5m series A and $7.5m series C funding round, respectively, but the company declined to disclose the financial terms of its involvement.

“IBM is committed to helping our partners accelerate the development and delivery of Watson enabled apps into market where we see endless opportunities for cognitive computing to transform entire industries,” said Stephen Gold, vice president, IBM Watson.  “WayBlazer and Sellpoints are terrific examples of how cognitive computing technology can be used to help organizations redefine customer engagement and drive much deeper, meaningful and relevant consumer experiences.”

Brian O’Keefe, chief executive officer of Sellpoints said: “With the natural language and cognitive computing capabilities of Watson, we’re able to deliver a more personalized, relevant and enjoyable experience, and drive a much deeper level of engagement with customers.”

IBM said the investments were part of the $100m it committed to Watson last year. But it hasn’t always made it clear that it was pursuing direct investments into companies willing to use its technology, which could be an expensive proposition in the long run. The company continues to be relatively quiet on the financial performance of the Watson unit.

Adallom, cloud security, Funding, HP, News & Analysis, Saas

Cloud security vendor Adallom secures $30m in series C led by HP

Adallom secured $30m in new funding this week from HP Ventures among others

Adallom secured $30m in new funding this week from HP Ventures among others

Cloud security service provider Adallom announced this week it has secured $30m in a series C funding round led by Hewlett Packard Ventures, which the company said it would put towards research and development.

Adallom, which was founded by cybersecurity veterans Assaf Rappaport, Ami Luttwak and Roy Reznik in 2012, offers a security service that integrates with the authentication chain of a range of SaaS applications and lets IT administrators monitor usage for every user on each device.

The software works with a conjunction of end-point and network security solutions and has a built-in, self-learning engine that analyses user activity on SaaS applications and assesses the riskiness of each transaction in real-time, alerting administrators when activity becomes too risky for an organisation given its security policies.

The company said the latest funding round, which brings the total amount secured by the firm since its founding three years ago to just under $50m, speaks to the rapid growth of the SaaS market, and the need for more flexible security solutions.

“The market’s embrace of our approach to cloud security and our investors’ continued confidence in our products, team and results to date is a strong endorsement of Adallom. It also serves as encouragement to continue to execute on our mission to deliver the best platform for protecting data in the cloud,” said Rappaport, Adallom’s chief executive. “We’re determined to exceed the expectations of our customers and investors, and continue our innovation in this market.”

The company said the investment will be used to double down on development and improve support for more services; it claims the security service already supports over 13,000 cloud apps.

Adallom’s funding round caps off a successful month for a number of cloud security vendors, with Palerra, ProtectWise and Elastica all securing millions in investment.

Analytics, cloud security, Funding, Machine learning, News & Analysis, Norwest Venture Partners (NVP), Palerra, Wing Venture Capital and Engineering Capital

Cloud security vendor Palerra scores $17m

Palerra is among a number of cloud security startup combining predictive analytics and machine learning algorithms to bolster cloud security

Palerra is among a number of cloud security startups combining predictive analytics and machine learning algorithms in clever ways

Cloud security vendor Palerra has secured $17m in series B funding, a move the company said would help accelerate sales and marketing efforts around its predictive analytics and threat detection services.

Palerra’s flagship service, Loric, combines threat detection and predictive analytics in order to provide automatic incident response and remediation for malicious traffic flowing to a range of cloud services and platforms.

Over the past few years we’ve seen a flurry of cloud security startups emerge, which all deploy analytics and machine learning algorithms to cleverly detect perceived and actual threats and respond in real-time, so it would seem enterprises are starting to become spoilt with choice.

The $17m round was led by August Capital, with participation from current investors Norwest Venture Partners (NVP), Wing Venture Capital and Engineering Capital, and brings the total amount secured by the firm to $25m.

The funds will be used to bolster sales and marketing efforts at the firm.

“The dramatic rise in adoption of cloud services by today’s enterprises against the backdrop of our generation’s most potent cyber threats has necessitated a new approach. LORIC was designed to meet these threats head on and this new round underscores our commitment to deliver the most powerful cloud security solution in the industry,” said Rohit Gupta, founder and chief executive officer of Palerra.

“As the perimeter disintegrates into a set of federated cloud-based and on-premises infrastructures, effective monitoring becomes almost impossible, unless security controls are embedded in these heterogeneous environments. This will require enterprises to reconsider and possibly redesign their security architecture and corresponding security controls by placing those controls in the cloud,” Gupta added.

FinancialForce, Funding, News & Analysis, Salesforce, Software as a service, VC

FinancialForce raises $110m to grow Salesforce-based ERP

FinancialForce has raised $110m from TCV, Salesforce

FinancialForce has raised $110m from TCV, Salesforce

FinancialForce, a provider of a Salesforce-based ERP and HR services has raised $110m in a round led by Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV) with participation from Salesforce’s investment arm, Salesforce Ventures. The company said it will use the funds to expand sales, marketing and development.

The latest funding round comes less than a year after the company scored $50m from Advent International.

“Our goal has always been to transform the ERP market in the same way that Salesforce has for CRM. As our growth indicates, the industry is responding to our customer-centric approach to ERP where our apps, built natively to run alongside the Salesforce Customer Success Platform, help businesses create meaningful relationships with customers and employees to grow their top and bottom lines,” said Jeremy Roche, chief executive officer and president, FinancialForce.com.

“With TCV and Salesforce Venture’s contributions, FinancialForce.com can continue our rapid rate of growth and become the cloud ERP choice for all forward-thinking companies,” Roche added.

The company has reported strong growth over the past couple of years, no doubt bolstered by the continued success Salesforce seems to be realising.

FinancialForce said 2014 was its “banner year” for the firm, reporting 91 per cent annual subscription run rate growth and $50m in revenue. It also increased its global headcount by more than 80 per cent, from 250 employees at the end of 2013 to more than 450 at the end of 2014. The company said it currently has more than 500 employees spread across six global offices.

The funding round speaks to what now seems to have become an entrenched industry dynamic – where younger, more nimble cloud-native startups like NetSuite and FinancialForce are starting to overtake large IT incumbents, particularly in areas where software is traditionally bulky and relies heavily on tight integration (i.e. ERP). Salesforce, the platform upon which FinancialForce is based, recently announced full fiscal year 2015 revenue hitting $5.37bn – no small sum by any stretch of the imagination.

Enterprise Strategy Group, Funding, Gene Stevens, News & Analysis, Scott Chasin, Universal Music Group

ProtectWise scores $17m to bring cloud security DVR to the enterprise

ProjectWise has exited stealth and announced it has raised $17m in funding

ProjectWise has exited stealth and announced it has raised $17m in funding

ProtectWise, which specialises in providing cloud security services, has exited stealth mode and announced it has secured $17m. The company, which was founded by former McAfee executives Scott Chasin and Gene Stevens, said it will use the funding to expand its sales and marketing efforts.

ProtectWise offers what it’s essentially calling a “cloud network DVR” that the company says can recall and analyse traffic going back weeks, months and even years in a bid to uncover any threats.

“By creating a network memory in the cloud, we’re able to provide a time machine for threat detection,” said Stevens, the company’s chief technology officer. “It automatically replays and analyzes stored network traffic whenever new threats emerge to uncover threats that were previously unknown.  This makes it possible to continuously analyze what we observe in the past and the present together to refine and reveal the threats that matter most.”

It also applies machine learning algorithms in conjunction with a number of commercial intelligence feeds to generate a broad security posture overview of a company’s digital services.

Some of the company’s early customers (it claims over a dozen overall) include the Enterprise Strategy Group and Universal Music Group.

“Enterprises today are grappling with Defense in Doubt,” said Chasin, the company’s chief executive officer. “The traditional defence in depth approach has left security professionals with a costly daisy chain of endpoint solutions that provide only a point-in-time view of threats and emit a tidal wave of security alarms with no context or correlation across solutions. By shifting network security to the cloud, we make it possible to leave this outdated, ineffective model of enterprise network security behind.”

Cloud security firms have attracted significant funding over the past couple of years, a testament to a growing shift towards cloud services. Earlier this month cloud security provider Elastica announced it had secured $30m in series B funding, a year after the firm exited stealth mode and announced its first investment round.

Cisco, Day1, Funding, Grand View Research, Infrastructure as a Service, InterCloud, Logic Method IT, Luis Benavides, Managed services, NetApp, News & Analysis

Cloud service integrator Day1 secures $2m

Day1 offers cloud system integration services

Day1 offers cloud system integration services

Cloud services integrator and provider Day1 Solutions has closed a $2m funding round the company said will be used to expand its technical services and sales team.

Day1 was founded in 2012 and provides NetApp cloud storage and Cisco Intercloud-based services to a range of public and private sector clients, and offers system integration services for clients deploying cloud services on Amazon’s cloud infrastructure.

It also offers a white label managed services platform to MSPs, an offering that grew out of its acquisition of Logic Method IT (LMIT) in November last year.

“Day1 Solutions is on a hyper-growth trajectory, and last year experienced a year-over-year revenue increase in excess of 1600 percent,” said Luis Benavides, founder and chief executive officer of Day1 Solutions.

“This funding is a testament to our investors’ confidence in Day1 Solutions’ leadership team, business model and ability to consistently deliver an exceptional cloud experience to a rapidly growing base of enterprise customers moving mission critical IT operations to the cloud.”

Day1’s specialisation is largely in the service integration piece, and many analyst houses expect cloud system integration to play an increasingly prominent role – particularly in the infrastructure integration segment – as enterprises increasingly hybridise their IT landscapes with a mix of multi-cloud, cloud and on-premise systems.

According to Grand View Research the global system integration market is expected to reach $393bn by 2020, with infrastructure integration accounting for about 35 per cent of that market.

API, Apigee, BlackRock, Funding, News & Analysis, Norwest Ventures, Platform as a service, SAP Ventures

API and cloud app specialist Apigee to go public

Apigee helps enterprises re-architect their apps to make them suitable for cloud, big data and IoT

Apigee helps enterprises re-architect their apps to make them suitable for cloud, big data and IoT

Apigee, an API software platform provider that helps enterprises build and scale apps, is the latest cloud provider to propose an initial public offering of shares of its common stock.

The firm, backed by notable technology investment firms including BlackRock, SAP Ventures and Norwest Ventures, has enlisted Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse Securities to help manage the process of going public.

The company hopes to raise a modest $87m through the IPO according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

While Apigee claims some of the most reputable firms in the world as customers (eBay, the BBC, Orange, Equinix) and secured close to $200m in seven funding rounds since it was founded in 2004, the company’s financials raise some questions about the company’s viability in the long term.

Like Box, the pure-play cloud storage and collaboration provider that also recently went public (raising over three times when Apigee is seeking), the company has accrued a notable amount of debt compared with what it intends to raise through the IPO.

The company’s gross billings were $36.7m, $43.1m and $63.8m in fiscal 2012, 2013 and 2014, respectively. But it incurred net losses of $8.3m, $25.9m and $60.8m in 2012, 2013 and 2014, respectively. It racked up losses of $26.8m in the six months ended January 31, 2015.

Nevertheless, it’s clear enterprise app development is becoming API-centric, as an increasing number of IT services are being joined up.

“We believe that application programming interfaces, or APIs, are a critical enabling technology for the shifts in mobile, cloud computing, big data and the IoT and that APIs are a foundational technology on which digital business operates. We believe that a new and expansive market opportunity exists to help enterprises adopt digital strategies and navigate the digitally driven economy,” the company said in its SEC S-1 filing.

“Today, it is difficult for many businesses to fully participate and innovate in the digital world because traditional enterprise software is not designed to interact with and connect to the rapidly evolving digital economy. The IT architectures deployed at most businesses are based on thousands of application servers communicating with databases, other applications and numerous middleware layers, each using thousands of custom integrations and connectors. These legacy architectures generally cannot publish APIs in a way that can be used by application developers.”

Big Data, data managementd, Database, Funding, IDC, Manish Sood, News & Analysis, Reltio

Cloud-based data management provider Reltio scores $10m

Reltio scored $10m, which will be used to expand its sales and marketing efforts

Reltio scored $10m, which will be used to expand its sales and marketing efforts

Reltio, a startup founded by Informatica veterans, has secured $10m in its first round of funding and announced the launch of its cloud-based data management platform.

Much like the integration element Informatica specialises in, Reltio is pitching its services at those that don’t necessarily want to acquire and set up all of the front-end and back-end big data tools in piecemeal, siloed fashion, but instead want an integrated platform that can query, analyses and display multiple data types.

The company said its data management platform is designed for those accustomed to using services like Facebook or Linkedin, but within traditionally data-intense industries like healthcare and life sciences, oil and gas, retail and distribution.

“Data is the new natural resource, but it’s truly valuable only when it’s effectively mined, related and transformed into insight with business actions that can be taken within the context of day-to-day operations,” said Manish Sood, founder and chief executive officer of Reltio.

“With Reltio, data is collated and analysed for actionable intelligence with the speed needed to support innovation and spark new revenue streams. IT gets a modern data management platform while business users get easy to use data-driven applications to address their everyday needs,” Sood said.

The company was founded largely by Informatica data management specialists: Sood led product strategy for master data management at Informatica; Anastasia Zamyshlyaeva, chief architect for Reltio, helped design the core components of Informatica’s MDM offering; Curt Pearlman, vice president of solutions, previously held positions in sales consulting with Informatica, as did Bob More, Reltio’s senior vice president of sales.

Reltio is throwing its hat into an increasingly competitive but lucrative ring. Analyst firm IDC estimates spending on big data and analytics will reach $125bn in 2015, with Database-as-a-Service growing in importance as cloud and commercial vendors open up their data sets.

ChannelAdvisor, Funding, Kabbage, Partnerships, Working capital

ChannelAdvisor, Kabbage Partnership Offers Retailers Access to Capital

ChannelAdvisor, a  provider of cloud-based e-commerce solutions that enable retailers to increase global sales, today announced its partnership with Kabbage Inc., an online provider of working capital for small businesses. This collaboration offers ChannelAdvisor customers direct access to a new source of funding in time for the 2012 holiday season.

Together, ChannelAdvisor and Kabbage offer online retailers a competitive advantage through the combination of advanced e-commerce software and immediate access to capital. Online retailers are able to use Kabbage to apply for and secure funding online within minutes. The funds can be used to stock up on inventory, expand channels, launch new marketing initiatives, hire staff and much more.

“ChannelAdvisor creates strategic partnerships that help retailers ramp up their sales, and our recent partnership with Kabbage provides our customers capital to fund their business needs,” said ChannelAdvisor Director of Business Development Jordan Weinstein. “Both ChannelAdvisor and Kabbage are key resources for any retailer who is looking to increase their marketplace volume. This opportunity is especially beneficial right before the holiday season, giving retailers a means to invest in new initiatives or inventory that will accelerate their sales in the coming months.”

“Many retailers are growing rapidly but lack the capital to truly take their business to the next level,” said Kabbage Chairman Marc Gorlin. “ChannelAdvisor is in the business of helping retailers grow and so are we, which is why this partnership makes so much sense. Together we are giving entrepreneurs access to the most trusted source of funding, used by thousands of small businesses to realize their growth potential.”

This new partnership has already benefitted Empire Security Cameras, a joint ChannelAdvisor and Kabbage customer, which is using Kabbage funds to implement advanced technology in order to efficiently scale its business.

“Connecting with Kabbage was a quick and easy process that allowed us to secure the funding that we needed to expand our online operations,” said Empire Security Cameras CEO Kyle Korona. “Traditional lending programs are not a fit for our business model, so being able to access much needed cash within minutes immediately changed our strategy. We were able to invest further in ChannelAdvisor software and additional marketing programs that ensure we are one of the most competitive security camera retailers on the internet.”