Category Archives: Venture Funding

3GPP Long Term Evolution, ABI Research, Accel Partners, Advent Venture Partners, Atlas Venture, Ubiquisys, Venture Funding

Ubiquisys Gets $19 Million for 3G/LTE/WiFi Public Small Cell Hotspots

Ubiquisys, the developer of 3G and LTE intelligent small cells, today announced it has raised $19m in an oversubscribed round from new investors Mobile Internet Capital and Nissay Capital, together with existing investors including 5CCG/Sallfort Privatbank AG, Accel Partners, Advent Venture Partners, Atlas Venture and Yasuda. Ranked #1 by ABI Research in its Indoor Small Cells Vendor Matrix 2012, Ubiquisys will use the capital to generate further profitable growth and accelerate delivery of innovative tri-mode 3G/LTE/WiFi small cell hotspots. The company is building on its leadership position in residential and enterprise femtocells, where its adaptive radio technology has underpinned successful high volume deployments, working with more than 70 operators across the world.

Mobile service providers are experiencing unprecedented growth in mobile data consumption, as consumers across the world embrace the benefits of smartphones in vast numbers. Macro network augmentation, spectrum additions and LTE can only meet a fraction of the extra capacity needed to meet consumer expectations. As a result, small cell deployments in public spaces, incorporating combinations of 3G, LTE and WiFi, are forecast to grow very rapidly, as they multiply the capacity of mobile networks whilst driving down costs. Indoor public spaces such as cafes, malls, transport hubs and office public spaces are the immediate opportunity for this type of small cell technology. Indoor is where most mobile data is consumed, where there is abundant low-cost fixed broadband for backhaul, where there are millions of available sites serving WiFi today, and where macro network cooperation is fully proven.

Ubiquisys’ technology, developed in collaboration with leading companies including Texas Instruments and Broadcom, is increasingly being selected by operators to fulfill these needs and open new commercial opportunities. Working with Intel, Ubiquisys has pioneered the smart cell: part small cell hotspot, part powerful computing platform. This new class of small cell moves rich content, cloud applications and core networking capabilities right to the edge of the network, transforming the mobile user experience.

“Public access small cells require extremely high performance, resilience and fully automatic, adaptive capabilities. By building on the heritage of our volume residential and enterprise deployments, we are able to provide solutions which can meet the rigorous demands of operators in public spaces,” said Chris Gilbert, CEO Ubiquisys. “We remain uniquely placed to benefit from the ongoing exceptional growth in the small cell market and welcome this investment to help us meet this demand.”


Cisco Systems, Network virtualization, Networking, Nicira, US Venture Partners, Venture Funding, VMware

PLUMgrid Gets $10.7 Million for Software-Defined Networking

PLUMgrid, Inc. today announced that it has secured $10.7 million in Series A Funding from US Venture Partners (USVP) and Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. PLUMgrid, with nearly two years of development completed, is pioneering an ecosystem-driven network infrastructure built on software-defined networking (SDN) concepts. The company will deliver network virtualization solutions that will enable businesses to manage their physical, virtual and cloud datacenters with greater agility and efficiency.

In 2011, PLUMgrid raised an initial funding round of $2 million, and USVP partner Chris Rust joined the company’s Board of Directors. Hummer Winblad managing director Lars Leckie co-led the PLUMgrid series A and now joins Rust on the PLUMgrid Board of Directors.

PLUMgrid CEO Awais Nemat co-founded the company in early 2011, and has brought together an outstanding team of industry veterans with a proven track record of success in designing, developing and deploying some of the most important systems and services in the history of the networking industry. Nemat has assembled a group of highly decorated innovators from companies such as Cisco Systems, Marvell, Nicira, SUN, Vyatta and VMware. With a strong heritage in mission-critical enterprise network infrastructure, PLUMgrid’s engineers and software visionaries have contributed significantly to the emergence of network virtualization technology in the past five years.

“Network virtualization and the move to software-defined networking (SDN) is a strategically important focus area for the networking industry,” said Nemat. “PLUMgrid was started nearly two years ago with a vision of providing a better way for customers to address new networking application needs and reduce excessive costs and complexity. This $10.7 million financing round provides the resources for PLUMgrid to realize this vision and deliver a comprehensive SDN solution to our customers.”

“PLUMgrid has a compelling combination of large market opportunity, highly differentiated approach with deep IP, and an exceptional team with a track record of commercial success. USVP is delighted to be a founding investor in PLUMgrid, and to be joined by Hummer Winblad as our co-lead in what we believe to be the best-of-breed SDN solution in the marketplace,” said Chris Rust, partner, USVP.

“The networking industry is experiencing a major shift as infrastructure becomes software-driven,” said Lars Leckie, managing director, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. “We see tremendous potential in supporting a new, unified network infrastructure that delivers value to customers by building on networking best practices yet enabling the radical agility, simplicity and ease of management that software brings to the table.”


Accel Partners, DocuSign, Google Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Venture Funding

Google Ventures Backs DocuSign

DocuSign announced today that Google Ventures has joined in the company’s most recent financing round, bringing the total Series D funding to $55.7 million. Google Ventures joins investment lead Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, along with Accel Partners, Comcast Ventures, SAP Ventures, and a large global institutional investor in this round. The company will use the funds to accelerate growth of the DocuSign Global Network via increased customer-focused R&D, deeper vertical industry solutions, and faster international expansion.

DocuSign’s secure, cloud-based platform helps consumers and businesses of all sizes and industries to complete transactions faster by eliminating the hassles, costs, and lack of security inherent in printing, faxing, scanning, and overnighting documents to capture information, payments and signatures. Companies use DocuSign to create better customer experiences and save money by automating and streamlining their business processes.

“The investment by Google Ventures highlights DocuSign’s value as a tech disruptor across the web and mobile platforms, from consumers to global enterprises,” said Keith Krach, DocuSign chairman and CEO. “DocuSign has become the global standard for eSignature by building a viral network of more than 20 million users that attracts 60,000 new users every day.”

“Electronic signatures are being rapidly adopted by enterprises, small businesses and consumers worldwide due to their convenience, security and ease of use,” said Karim Faris, partner, Google Ventures. “DocuSign’s market momentum, deep technology and strong team attracted us to them and we are excited to be working with the company as they scale their business worldwide extending their reach to hundreds millions of consumers.”

Global enterprises, business departments, individual professionals and consumers are standardizing on DocuSign, with 60,000 new users joining the DocuSign Global Network every day. Today, that network includes 20 million users who have DocuSigned more than 150 million documents in 188 countries – including employees at 90 percent of the Fortune 500. DocuSign is used to finish business faster across nearly every industry – from financial services, insurance, technology, healthcare, manufacturing, communications, real estate, consumer goods to higher education and others – as well every business department, including sales, finance, operations, procurement, HR/staffing, legal, and customer support.


Amazon AWS, Amazon.com, Box, Cloud Storage, DropBox, Storage, Venture Funding

Box, Dropbox Coming of Age? Ready to Take on Amazon?

“Two of the buzziest competitors in cloud computing are settling into coexistence — and maybe figuring out ways to take on the giant in the market, Amazon.com.”

That’s the lead of a New York Times Bits column today that arrives on the heels of the news that Box has a new round of VC funding to the tune of$125 Million.

“Like its competitor Dropbox, Box offers a little bit of data storage free, then charges for additional amounts. Both companies make money from a relatively small number of paying customers who need large amounts of storage. Mr. Levie said Box has about 125,000 businesses using its service, but only “tens of thousands” of paying customers.

Despite being in the same business, the two companies seem to be finding entirely different customer bases. While Dropbox has a corporate service, it recently announced capacity and pricing changes in its much larger consumer business, aimed at encouraging people to store things like photos taken with cell phones.”

 


M&A Activity, Penta Capital, Surrey, Venture Funding

Six Degrees Group Announces New Funding, Cloud Hosting Acquisition

Image representing Penta Capital as depicted i...

Six Degrees Group today announces it has raised £8 million in new funding from Penta Capital and that it has completed the acquisition of Cloud Computing Centre (CCC), a Surrey-based managed cloud hosting expert established in 1999.

CCC focuses on the cloud market and brings over 100 mid-market hosting customers who spend an average of £36,000 pa. The acquisition takes Six Degrees Group’s run-rate position to £50m revenue and £12m EBITDA. CCC’s cloud platform is highly complementary to the existing Six Degrees technology and they are also a Microsoft Gold Partner and Silver Hosting Partner, bringing incremental skillsets for Microsoft Hyper-V to the Group.

Commenting on the acquisition, Alastair Mills, CEO of Six Degrees Group, stated:

“I am delighted to welcome Cloud Computing Centre to Six Degrees Group. This is a significant acquisition for us as it reinforces our mid-market focus, strengthens our managed cloud hosting team and brings outstanding technical capabilities to the Group.”

In response, Keith Bates, CEO of Cloud Computing Centre, stated:

“This is an exciting day in the evolution of Cloud Computing Centre. We felt that the time was right to join forces with one of the fastest-growing managed data service providers in the sector, especially when we have so much in common. Joining Six Degrees Group will significantly strengthen our ability to win mid-market and corporate cloud hosting contracts and to deliver new services to our existing clients.”


Andreessen Horowitz, Business Intelligence, General Catalyst Partners, GoodData, Tenaya Capital, Venture Funding, Windcrest Partners

GoodData Gets $25 Million for Business Intelligence Tools

Image representing GoodData as depicted in Cru...

GoodData announced today that it has closed $25 million in Series C funding led by Tenaya Capital, with participation from new investor Next World Capital, and existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst Partners, Fidelity Growth Partners and Windcrest Partners. The company has raised $53.5 million in total to date.

Brian Paul, Managing Director at Tenaya Capital will join the board of directors. Other existing board members include John O’Farrell, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz; Larry Bohn, Managing Director of General Catalyst Partners; James Gellert, Partner at Windcrest Partners, Dave Girouard, former General Manager of Google Enterprise, and Roman Stanek, founder and CEO of GoodData.

Since the company was founded, more than 6,000 customers have adopted GoodData to monetize their data. In 2011, the company posted 600 percent bookings growth and more than doubled employees and customers, making GoodData one of the fastest growing companies in the space.

GoodData will use the new funding to continue to invest in technology innovation as well as build sales and marketing programs to raise awareness and accelerate adoption of its disruptive, cloud-based platform.

“It’s time to pull the plug on the old business intelligence model — it’s clear that it is obsolete,” said Roman Stanek, founder and CEO of GoodData. “We are pioneering a new approach to business intelligence that will monetize and bring big data to life.”


Accel Partners, Business Processes, DocuSign, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Scale Venture Partners, Venture Funding

DocuSign Gets $47.5 Million for Document Signatures Via Cloud

Image representing DocuSign as depicted in Cru...

DocuSign has secured $47.5 million in funding from premier investors, public funds, and strategic tech-industry leaders. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers led the funding. Accel Partners and a large, global institutional investor joined in the funding round. Comcast Ventures and SAP Ventures provided additional investment joining existing tech industry partners salesforce.com and the National Association of REALTORS®. The company will use the funds to accelerate growth of the DocuSign Global Network via increased customer-focused R&D, deeper vertical industry solutions, and faster international expansion. The company also announced that Kleiner’s Mary Meeker, a noted Internet-industry expert, has joined its board of directors.

DocuSign’s legally binding, secure, cloud-based platform helps consumers and businesses of all sizes and industries collect information and sign documents online – eliminating the hassles, costs, and lack of security in printing, faxing, scanning, and overnighting documents to capture information and signatures. Companies use DocuSign to create better customer experiences and save money by automating and streamlining their business processes.

“This financing demonstrates the value the market places on innovative technologies that drive fundamental business transformation – particularly those with immediate ROI, viral adoption, and nearly unlimited application,” said Keith Krach, chairman and CEO, DocuSign. “DocuSign empowers anyone to sign anything, anywhere, anytime.”

“DocuSign has created a compelling and rapidly growing business by re-imagining an age-old basic service – signing documents,” said Mary Meeker, general partner, Kleiner Perkins. “DocuSign’s easy-to-use eSignature platform is transforming the way documents are processed and delivered, with record speed and efficiency. This financing highlights the appeal of the eSignature Transaction Management market and the value of DocuSign’s global, viral network.”

“We’re investing in DocuSign because electronic signatures have gone from a ‘nice to have’ to a ‘must have’, and DocuSign is the clear global leader in this industry,” said Philippe Botteri, Accel Partners. “We expect DocuSign’s growth to be exponential given the viral nature of their platform and the rapid adoption of mobile devices and tablets which makes DocuSigning that much more convenient.”

Global enterprises, business departments, individual professionals and consumers are standardizing on DocuSign with 60,000 new users joining the DocuSign Global Network every business day. Today, that network includes 20 million users who have DocuSigned more than 150 million documents in 188 countries – including employees at 90% of the Fortune 500. DocuSign is used to finish business faster across nearly every industry – including financial services, insurance, technology, healthcare, manufacturing, communications, real estate, consumer goods and higher education – and every business department – including sales, procurement, HR/staffing, legal, and customer support.

DocuSign’s growing customer base of 1.4 million paying users include companies like American Airlines, AON, Ariba, Auto Insurance Specialists (AIS), Bayer, BECU, BNY Mellon, Boston Scientific, BMW Financial Services, Box, California Closets, CB Richard Ellis, CenturyLink, Cisco, Comcast, Costco, Cox, DuPont, eBay, Expedia, Extra Space Storage, Haagen-Dazs Shoppe Company, HP, IKON Financial Services, Legal & General America (Banner Life and William Penn Life Insurance), LinkedIn, Madison Capital, Medtronic, Pinney Insurance, Siemens, Sony, TD Ameritrade Institutional, Toyota, Transamerica, United Automobile Insurance Services, Wellmark, Xerox, Yahoo!, and Yamaha.

DocuSign investors include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Accel Partners, Comcast Ventures, SAP Ventures, Sigma+Partners, Scale Venture Partners, Frazier Technology Ventures, Ignition Partners, Second Century Ventures, WestRiver Capital LLC, salesforce.com, and the National Association of REALTORS®. To learn more about DocuSign, visit www.docusign.com.

 


Andreessen Horowitz, Bitcasa, Cloud Storage, Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity, First Round Capital, Pelion Venture Partners, Storage, Venture Funding

Bitcasa Gets $7 Million for “Infinite” Cloud Storage

Bitcasa, the cloud storage company that integrates infinite storage, sync, backup and share into desktops and across devices, announced today that it has raised $7 million in its Series A funding round, bringing the total funding to $9 million. Pelion Venture Partners, an existing investor, and Horizons Ventures, a new investor, led the round, with Andreessen Horowitz, First Round Capital, CrunchFund, and Samsung Ventures participating. Funds will be used to further accelerate the company’s impressive growth, shorten the time-to-market for upcoming storage and data management offerings, and expand sales and marketing. The company’s service offering is also now officially in open beta, and users can sign up at http://www.bitcasa.com.

In the past few months, Bitcasa users in 120 countries saved more than 4 petabytes of data and uploaded more than 1 billion files to Bitcasa. The service uses client-side encryption, compression, and deduplication technologies to seamlessly integrate infinite storage into all of the devices. Users can now store, sync, backup and send infinite amounts of data without having to worry about management and capacity constraints. During the beta program, they can take advantage of the service for free; after beta, they can continue the access to infinite storage for only $10 a month.

“As the seed investor, we have been impressed with Bitcasa’s efforts to solve the storage challenges that consumers and small and medium businesses face,” said Carl Ledbetter, managing director at Pelion Venture Partners and a Bitcasa board member. “Bitcasa’s infinite storage solution solves space, management, and security challenges for today’s users and has been well-received by the tens of thousands who have tried the service during its beta period. Bitcasa’s solution goes far beyond services that provide only backup, synchronization, or large file sharing or movement; Bitcasa is the first and only service that provides unlimited storage of all of a user’s files in the cloud, making the cloud-based virtual desktop a reality. This is the way we will all connect to our online, tablet, mobile, and PC-based environments in the near future, and Bitcasa is the defining step.”

“I am glad to see the continued commitment of our initial investors, as well as the involvement of our new investors,” said Tony Gauda, co-founder and CEO of Bitcasa. “This funding round shows that our investors recognize the potential that we have in this market and have been pleased with our progress. It is exciting to see the users’ increased adoption of our infinite storage solution that helps them store and share more data than they could have ever imagined. We are working on more amazing features and are currently looking to bring on great talent to join our team.”


Deloitte, Embotics, IT Management, Magirus, Private Cloud, Venture Funding, VentureLink LP

Embotics Gets $8.4 Million for Private Cloud Management

Image representing Embotics as depicted in Cru...

Private cloud management vendor Embotics Corporation today announced that it has closed $8.4 million in equity financing. Bringing Embotics’ total financing-to-date to $18 million, this latest round includes $2.5 million from VentureLink LP and $2.5 million from Covington Fund II Inc. (Covington), with the remainder of the funds coming from other private investors. Embotics will use the funding to accelerate global sales and marketing efforts, as well as to hire more software engineers.

This mix of pragmatic growth, strategic marketing and sales investments will build upon the momentum of the past year’s 300 percent growth in sales to further strengthen Embotics V-Commander’s leadership position in the private cloud management market.

“We continue to support Embotics because of its proven track record of successfully developing products that address the problems in virtual data center environments,” said Phil Reddon, managing partner of Covington. “Our experience investing in the virtualization sector, along with Embotics’ success in assisting companies with private cloud management, automation and self-service provisioning, make for a smart business and investment partnership between our two organizations.”

“We have a strong belief in Embotics and its virtualization and cloud management technology. Due to the market need for its solutions, we are confident that Embotics’ business will continue to grow,” said Jim Whitaker, managing partner of VentureLink LP. “Embotics’ clear differentiation in cloud management made its business and this opportunity very attractive to us.”

This round of financing comes on the heels of Embotics’ most successful year to date. The company has experienced 300 percent growth in sales over the past year and 220 percent year-on-year growth in new customers, which now include Bell, Deloitte, Cisco, CSC, Dutch Ministry of Defence, MITRE and numerous universities and public sector departments. In addition, Embotics has signed new channel partnerships, including one with Magirus in Europe.

“We are thrilled to continue our partnership with Covington and to begin our new relationship with VentureLink because of their proven success when it comes to supporting technology innovation,” said Jay Litkey, CEO of Embotics. “The significant increase in our sales demonstrates the opportunity that exists in the market. This financing will enable us to match that opportunity with clearly defined differentiation, corresponding sales and an increased engineering team to support new and existing customer opportunities.”


Data center, Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity, Green Cloud, Venture Funding, Virtualization, VMware

Green Cloud Technologies Gets $2,750,000 for Data Center Expansion

Green Cloud Technologies, a Cloud-based technology solutions provider headquartered in Greenville, SC, has concluded a $2,750,000 round of financing that is a mix of Series B Preferred Units and three-year Convertible Notes. The bulk of the financing comes from Millry Corporation, a 70-year-old Incumbent Local Telephone Carrier serving southwestern Alabama. The additional financing will be used for market expansion and the build-out of the company’s second data center facility in Nashville, TN. Green Cloud previously secured $1,250,000 through the sale of Series A units in 2011.

“This is another vote of confidence for Green Cloud’s strategy from a very savvy and experienced investor group,” said Shaler P. Houser, CEO of Green Cloud. “This financing further enables Green Cloud to help businesses transition to our secure, reliable, and robust Cloud-based infrastructure and increase the efficiency and performance of their businesses.”

Green Cloud’s offerings include VMware-based Virtual Servers, Mirror-Imaged Disaster Recovery, and Hosted Telephone Services.

“We are excited about the opportunity to invest in this area of communications,” added Paul Brown, president of Millry Corporation. “Since 1941, we as a company and family have invested directly in local telephone service, Internet access, cellular telephone service, and wireless digital voice/data services and continue today to search for product offerings that will be required for the marketplace. The platform and services that are being offered by Green Cloud are the latest evolution in the industry and will attract business clients through cost savings and, more specifically, customer service. We look forward to the growth of Green Cloud as its CEO and employees concentrate on providing a best-in-market service offering.”

Green Cloud recently announced expansion plans into the Myrtle Beach – Charleston – Savannah corridor and the Huntsville –Nashville – Chattanooga area. The company is 100% dedicated to Authorized Partner distribution and uses no direct sales force. By partnering with local consultants, IT managed service providers, and PBX distributors, Green Cloud enables its partners to leverage the benefits of Cloud technologies without making the substantial investments necessary to deploy fully-redundant Cloud services.