Follow The Money: 10 Recent Tech VC Investments To Watch In March

Deep Pockets

Tech startups and venture capital firms are pairing up this spring, and security, cloud, BYOD and disaster recovery are just a few of the hot sectors under discussion between these two groups, which in many ways play a leading role in driving the direction of the technology market.

Every month here on CRN, we'll track some tech company funding rounds from the past six weeks worthy of industry attention. Here's a look at the latest notable infusions -- and the companies that drove them.

Armor5

Headquarters: Santa Clara, Calif.
CEO: Suresh Balasubramanian
New Funding: $2 million
Round: A
Backers: Citrix, Nexus Venture Partners, Trinity Ventures


Recently emerged from stealth mode, Armor5 focuses on security to support the BYOD phenomenon by eliminating the need for data to reside on mobile devices. The company offers a cloud service that accesses a client’s network, virtualizes enterprise data and applications, and provisions secure and compliant access for every end user using any mobile device. A beta version of the service is currently available.

CloudHealth

Headquarters: Boston
CEO: Dan Phillips
New Funding: $4.5 million
Round: Series A
Backers: .406 Ventures, Sigma Prime Ventures


Despite a name that suggests the company might be in the healthcare industry, this startup is believed to be working on a SaaS solution that does business analytics around cloud usage. The net objective is to help business managers optimize cloud usage to best meet technology demands while maintaining enhanced cost control.

Concurrent

Headquarters: San Francisco
CEO: Gary Nakamura
New Funding: $4 million
Round: Series A
Backers: True Ventures, Rembrandt Venture Partners


Big data also continues to attract big money, leading to a cash infusion for an application platform venture called Concurrent. The money is planned for increased product development and staff expansion. The company's flagship, product, known as "Cascading 2.1," is a tool for building applications on Hadoop. The company recently named Gary Nakamura as its new CEO.

Endgame

Headquarters: Herndon, Va.
CEO: Nathaniel Fick
New Funding: $23 million
Round: Series B
Backers: Paladin Capital


As IT security continues to be a major driver for the industry and a huge issue for business-at-large, developments emerging from the defense community can provide a long-term view of how security will evolve. This company is focused on large-scale data analysis to support command-and-control functions. The company believes their technologies will help further the cause of security as an increasing variety of devices become IP-enabled and vulnerable to attack.

Handshakez

Headquarters: Austin, Texas
CEO: Jason Wesbecher
New Funding: $3.6 million
Round: A
Backers: Austin Ventures, First Round Capital, Floodgate, CrunchFund, Valhalla Partners, Thinktiv


The use of technology to forge closer customer relationships and increased efficiencies is one of the hot buttons in the industry today. Handshakez comes to the table with a collaboration and analytics platform aimed at raising the bar for CRM applications. Its stakeholders within customer organizations include sales, marketing and client services.

Pertino

Headquarters: Los Gatos, Calif.
CEO: Craig Elliott
New Funding: $20 million
Round: B
Backers: Jafco Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners


A provider of cloud networking software, Pertino has recently come out of stealth mode and received a major financial shot in the arm from its key investors. The company is focused on a cloud network engine intended to minimize the time, effort and energy associated with cloud-based network build-outs.

PHD Virtual Technologies

Headquarters: Philadelphia
CEO: James Legg
New Funding: $2 million
Round: C
Backers: Insight Venture Partners, Citrix


PHD Virtual specializes in virtual backup for VMware and Citrix and also monitoring solutions for physical, virtual and cloud environments. Recent announcements include direct backup to the cloud through the company's CloudHook module, which is available with the latest version of PHD Virtual Backup 6.2. The company has also secured $2 million in venture debt financing from Wellington Financial.

Quorum

Headquarters: San Jose, Calif.
CEO: Larry Lang
New Funding: $11 million
Round: Series B
Backers: Toba Capital, Airtek Capital Group


Quorum specializes in backup, recovery, and continuity products for the small to medium-sized business segment, leveraging hybrid cloud environments and appliances. Automatic and on-demand testing features come standard with the offering. The company plans to use the investment to expand sales, marketing and support, as well as to fund the hiring of additional engineers.

SalesFusion

Headquarters: Atlanta
CEO: Chad Ruff
New Funding: $1 million
Round: A-1
Backers: Hallett Capital


SalesFusion develops technologies in the cloud marketing automation software space, with a particular focus on integrations to CRM systems from Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Sage Software, SugarCRM, SalesLogix, NetSuite and Salesforce.com. The cash infusion is intended to help expand the product portfolio as well as sales and service capabilities. The company also expects to raise additional capital later this year in order to fund international expansion and possible acquisitions.

Spanning Cloud Apps

Headquarters: Austin, Texas
CEO: Charlie Wood
New Funding: $6 million
Round: Series B
Backers: An "undisclosed strategic investor," Foundry Group


The storage sector is gaining increased attention, given the sheer volume of data residing in the data center and in the cloud. Spanning Cloud Apps offers a service called "Spanning Backup," which targets the Google user community. The value proposition is based on backup and recovery supporting the full range of Google applications, including Gmail, Drive, Sites, Calendar and Contacts.