Less that a month after it’s distributed database-as-a-service became available on Joyent’s cloud platform, Cloudant today announced that it has raised $12 million in series B funding from Devonshire Investors, Rackspace Hosting and Toba Capital. Aimed to aid Cloudant’s global expansion, the funding will help grow the company’s service, support, and go-to-market strategies.
In addition to funding, Cloudant has also announced opening of a new office in San Francisco, which it will use to establish it’s firm presence in the enterprise software market and strengthen its relationships with the Web and mobile application development communities. The company has also announced plans to open new technical offices in Asia, which will help it in providing round-the-clock global customer support.
Spending on cloud infrastructure is no longer an IT line-item; it’s now a major line-of-business concern. With strategic support from Rackspace, Cloudant is providing a clearer path for businesses to run large production workloads in the hybrid cloud.– Vinny Smith, Founder, Toba Capital.
In addition to it’s current investors Avalon Ventures, In-Q-Tel and Samsung Venture Investment Corporation, who’ve purchased additional shares, Cloudant has been able to court new investors like Mr. Vinny Smith, founder, Toba Capital, thanks to the momentum in the enterprise market.
“Enterprises are quickly realizing that they want a cloud that isn’t one size fits all. They want to scale their app without having to customize it to fit within a third-party cloud,” said Mr. Vinny.
“Spending on cloud infrastructure is no longer an IT line-item; it’s now a major line-of-business concern. With strategic support from Rackspace, Cloudant is providing a clearer path for businesses to run large production workloads in the hybrid cloud,” he added.
According to an official blog post made earlier today, Cloudant wants to use the funding to expand the number of libraries, platforms, and locations that it supports, so that its customers can build more applications with the tools and languages they are comfortable with, rather than learning new ones.
“The market opportunity for managed, hosted databases is large, and the NoSQL model is where major mobile and Web applications are moving,” said Mr. David Jegen, managing director, Devonshire Investors.
“We’re seeing that shift accelerate across the industry with Cloudant in the sweet spot of this market, adding big customer names with a highly scalable and durable DBaaS,” he added.
Based on a globally distributed network of data centers, Cloudant’s managed NoSQL DBaaS provides customers with 24×7 monitoring and administration, so that they don’t have to operate and scale distributed databases themselves.
“We hear all the time from customers that dealing with the complexities of large-scale systems infrastructure just slows them down. Developers want control of their infrastructure, but they don’t want to have to manage it 24×7,” said Mr. Pat Matthews, senior vice president of corporate development, Rackspace.
“Cloudant is the natural extension of this idea at the database layer. We’re partners that share a commitment to delivering the highest level of customer support, which is why investing in Cloudant works so well from a Rackspace perspective,” he added.
