Appirio and the Cloud Computing Market Continue to Grow and Attract Investment in a Tough Economy
SAN MATEO, CA.—February 25, 2009—Today Appirio (www.appirio.com), a leading on-demand products and professional services company, today announced that it has secured $10 million in Series C financing from GGV Capital and Sequoia Capital, which will be used to further invest in product development, go-to-market strategies and services to help businesses confidently move to cloud computing. Appirio also plans to use the money to invest in and expand strategic partnerships. Today’s funding follows a Series B investment of $5.6 million led by Sequoia Capital in July 2008. In total, Appirio has raised $16.7 million in funding.
"Appirio has emerged as a clear leader in driving SaaS and cloud computing adoption within the enterprise, and the company’s execution on its combined products and services business model has been nothing but impressive," said Jeff Richards, partner at GGV Capital. "Cloud computing has the potential to disrupt almost a trillion dollars in global IT spend when you combine packaged applications, services and hardware. With Appirio’s track record, vision and strong partnerships, the company is well positioned to be a major catalyst driving the cloud computing industry forward."
In an economy where many IT budgets are flat or declining, industry analysts believe cloud computing to be counter-cyclical. In fact, IDC recently increased its SaaS growth projection for 2009 from 36 percent growth to 40.5 percent growth over 2008, and predicts that cloud computing will increase 260 percent by 2010.
"The business case for cloud computing is strong, and we're seeing the pace of investment from investors and customers growing as a result," said Chris Barbin, CEO of Appirio. "The lower up-front costs, the ability to scale usage up or down and pay only for what you need, and the chance to remove depreciating hardware assets from the balance sheet are always attractive. In these conditions they are top of mind. GGV's investment and expertise can help us significantly advance our offerings and continue growing the company to meet the high demand we're seeing."
As a company, Appirio provides both products and professional services to accelerate enterprise adoption of on-demand solutions. Offerings range from strategy engagements to define a company's path to the cloud, to SaaS implementation and custom development services, to products that extend customers' on-demand investments.
Established in 2006, Appirio quickly formed strong partnerships with industry leaders like Google and salesforce.com, and has since worked closely with them on many of their largest enterprise implementations. The company, which is 100 percent focused on SaaS and other on-demand technologies, runs its entire operations in the cloud and does not own a single server. Since its founding, Appirio has run a profitable services business, has grown revenue 375 percent year over year and has successfully served more than 2,500 customers. Appirio also announced today it has expanded operations in Japan (see today's related release on Appirio's Japan expansion and work with Japan Post).
Appirio has developed three of the top seven products on AppExchange, and recently introduced two new products that extend customer-facing processes using cloud platforms. Appirio's Referral Management Solution allows companies to systematically market and sell to 175M Facebook users, while its PS Essentials product enables professional services organizations to manage their business using the salesforce.com platform. This new round of investment will help expand innovation across the entire Appirio product portfolio.
About GGV Capital
GGV Capital (www.ggvc.com), formerly Granite Global Ventures, is an expansion stage venture capital firm focused on the United States and Asia. GGV Capital manages over $1B from its offices in Silicon Valley (Menlo Park), Shanghai, Beijing and Singapore. The firm invests across a range of sectors in information technology, services and healthcare, as well as the consumer growth sector in China. Representative investments include Alibaba (HKSE: 1688.HK), AAC Acoustic (HKSE: 2018.HK), AthenaHealth (NASDAQ: ATHN), HiSoft, QuinStreet, SuccessFactors (NASDAQ: SFSF), Tudou and XenoPort (NASDAQ: XNPT).
About Appirio
Appirio (www.appirio.com) provides products and services that help enterprises accelerate their adoption of on-demand solutions. Appirio has a proven track record of delivering value to customers by implementing mission-critical Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions based on platforms such as Salesforce and Google Apps, and developing innovative applications that connect and extend today's leading cloud computing platforms. With offices in the U.S. and Japan, Appirio is the fastest growing partner of salesforce.com and Google, and is backed by Sequoia Capital and GGV Capital.
Appirio at a glance
Introduction to Appirio
pr@appirio.com
