U.S. software-management company AppDynamics said Tuesday it raised $120 million in venture capital, launching the company into the growing group of startups valued at more than $1 billion. The company taps into the growing tendency of business to rely on software applications, meaning easy-to-deploy software that does not rely on major technology infrastructure overhauls, unlike traditional software from legacy providers. Managing applications is evolving into a $4 billion to $5 billion global business annually, said Jyoti Bansal, AppDynamics’ chief executive officer, in its announcement. While a number of consumer companies carry valuations topping $1 billion, few enterprise companies do. They include cloud-storage service Box, mobile-device management company Good Technology, data-management company Actifio, and storage-infrastructure company Nutanix.
AppDynamics, a company with software for tracking the performance of applications, can keep spending money on product development and sales amid a competitive market, thanks to 120 million in fresh financing. The company today announced the new moneym which includes $70 million in growth funding and $50 million in debt funding. That way, AppDynamics can hold off on an initial public offering, as stock traders still lack the enthusiasm they had for cloud computing stocks just a few months ago. But AppDynamics has been growing and rolling out new features for mobile monitoring and business analytics, which could give it a bigger market to go after. Combine that with a focus on serving enterprises with complex applications, and you get good circumstances for a company like AppDynamics to raise money. “In our case, the investor interest was very, very high, AppDynamics co-founder and chief executive Jyoti Bansal said in an itnerview with VentureBeat. “We we were oversubscribed but able to pick out investors that we liked from a group of investors who were interested.” The announcement comes after a report last month that AppDynamics had taken on mezzanine capital and a revolving credit line. Now the exact dollar figures are out in the open. AppDynamics could certainly use the money. It contends with application-monitoring and IT operations software vendors like BMC, Compuware, HP, and IBM, and Bansal’s previous employer, CA. At the same time, younger vendors also eye the application-monitoring market. Well funded New Relic leads the pack there. Recently startup Chronon Systems recalibrated its DripStat Java virtual machine monitoring software and started marketing it as APM. Meanwhile others, like AppNeta and mobile focused-Crittercism keep ticking along.
