Venture Capital in the Cloud

Igor Altman

January 6, 2011

This week I heard two announcements concerning venture capital investment into expansion stage software vendors in the cloud computing space.

One is Symplified, which raised $9 million from insiders and Quest. I wrote in the past about the importance and opportunity for a new breed of identity and access management vendors in the cloud context. Quest seems to agree, and via its investment it is positioned to acquire Symplified, as it did with Vizioncore a few years ago.

The other is SkyTap, which I’m proud to say raised capital from us, OpenView Venture Partners! SkyTap has been gaining tremendous traction by tailoring their cloud solution to specific customer segments and use cases, mainly supporting software QA testing and remote training.

And very importantly, they made their self-service infrastructure solutions ridiculously easy to use!(VMWare agrees)

However, the ease of use does not translate to simplicity of environment. With its impressive customer roster, SkyTap has proven itself ideal for complex enterprise environments.

Senior Director Project Management

Igor Altman is Senior Director of Product Management at <a href="https://www.mdsol.com/en/">Medidata Solutions</a>, a leading global provider of cloud-based clinical development solutions that enhance the efficiency of customers’ clinical trials. Prior to Medidata, he worked at OpenView focusing on new investments in the IT space.