Partners Key To New VC Funding For Softricity
The company plans to use the money to bring on new solution provider partners, expand its joint marketing efforts with partners and grow its Client Technical Services staff, said David Greschler, executive vice president of marketing at Softricity, Boston.
The round was oversubscribed, meaning investors were willing to give more money than the company wanted to take, he said.
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Softricity's David Greschler says the company hopes to grow partner ranks fivefold.
"The key piece [in securing the funding is our VAR channel model, which [investors liked a lot," Greschler said.
Softricity hopes to expand its partner ranks to between 75 and 100 solution providers by the end of 2003, up from 16 currently, he said.
The company partners with Citrix Systems and Microsoft and recruits Citrix Platinum channel partners to sell its products.
Softricity plans to use the remainder of the funding for product development, including integration with Microsoft's .Net platform.
The company's application delivery and management platform, SoftGrid, supports both Microsoft Windows desktop and Terminal Services environments. Applications are centrally housed on the SoftGrid server but are sent to the client device on demand in bits and pieces to be executed locally. The platform's SystemGuard technology keeps the applications from altering the registry of the server's operating system, eliminating software conflicts, Greschler said.
For clients running Citrix MetaFrame, SoftGrid can cut costs by reducing the number of servers required in the MetaFrame farm, said Lesley Taufer, president and CEO of Boulder Corp., a Boulder, Colo., solution provider.
"Because [SoftGrid gets rid of many conflicts a customer might have, [users don't have to sequester applications [on dedicated servers in the Citrix farms," Taufer said.
The main challenge facing Softricity is whether it can sustain itself until it gains traction with large enterprise clients. The new funding helps lower that barrier, said Mitch Northcutt, CEO and president of RapidApp, a solution provider based in Chicago. "People we have introduced [SoftGrid to are very interested," he said.
For now, RapidApp is concentrating on selling SoftGrid to its existing base of Citrix clients, he said.
Softricity has had 15 client implementations since launching the product last fall, Greschler said.