Cloud Computing: Apptio Picks Up $50 Million Round
March 16, 2012
The venture capital boys must have been bitten by the largesse bug. Another cloud company has pulled in a monster fourth round. Apptio, which already has $41 million, is getting a fresh $50 million from newcomer T Rowe Price (mostly) as well as existing investors Andreesen Horowitz, Greylock, Madrona Venture Group and Shasta Ventures, evidently persuaded the four-year-old start-up is on to a billion-dollar market.
It makes enterprise B2B SaaS software that lets CIOs manage, monitor, budget and forecast their IT spending, including online services. They’re supposed to use it to communicate IT’s cost, quality and value to business management. It will use the money on sales expansion, product development and customer service. It’s going to hire more people adding about 100 to its staff of 260 by the end of the year…
It says it’s currently managing $101 billion in IT spending for 85 global customers like Bank of America, BNP Paribas, Boeing, Cisco, Clorox, Microsoft, Facebook and JP Morgan Chase.
Apptio, which is supposed to know how to execute at scale, says the money will let it maintain its independence. That’ll make it more valuable when it gets bought or IPOs although the Wall Street Journal thinks it’s already on an IPO track like Workday and Palo Alto Networks. It says its revenues have been doubling. It reportedly did about $60 million last year.
It told the Journal its valuation was up 300% from its C round in 2010.