Cloud Services Co. Skytap Hooks OpenView For Series C

Hoping that a foothold in software development environments can help it reach profitability and beyond, cloud automation services provider Skytap Inc. said it has secured $10 million in Series C funding.

New investor OpenView Venture Partners led the round, which included participation from existing investors Ignition Partners, Madrona Venture Group and Washington Research Foundation. The company declined to disclose the valuation.

The Seattle-based company sells a service that enables companies to set up virtual data centers that are hosted by Skytap with an interface that makes it easy for customers to create new virtual data centers, said Scott Roza, its chief executive.

OpenView began looking at a variety of cloud computing companies about two years ago and was drawn to Skytap because it provides a “really easy interface for dynamic loads, essentially applications that are going through changes,” said Scott Maxwell, the firm’s senior managing director.

The simplicity of building new virtual data centers using Skytap makes it attractive for software test-and-development teams, which would otherwise need to frequently provision and re-provision on-site hardware, but it is also used for hosting applications for training, sales demos and application migration, Roza said.

Over time, as enterprises look to offload more of their data centers into cloud services, Skytap will have already proved itself to customers in test-and-development deployments, Maxwell said.

The company expects that this round will take it to profitability and should be the last round it needs to take, Roza said. It currently has about 150 customers, weighted toward software vendors but including many “classic enterprises” as well, he said.

He declined to discuss the company’s current sales.

Maxwell has joined the company’s board as a result of the round.