IQuate raises $15m for Silicon Valley merger
IRISH software firm iQuate has raised $15m (€13.4m) to fund a merger with Silicon Valley cloud management expert Hypergrid.
The tech companies have combined to form CloudSphere, which will focus on helping businesses to operate in the cloud environment.
The CloudSphere funding round was led by Atlantic Bridge Capital and included private investors that previously backed iQuate, which counts Fortune 500 companies such as DHL, American Express, Sky and Volvo among its clients.
Last September, iQuate closed a previous $10m funding round that had valued the company at $40m and chief executive Patrick McNally, who has now become CEO of the merged group, said the transformational deal was “a merger of equals”.
“Cloud adoption in the enterprise is well under way and promises to be one of the most significant technology shifts in this decade,” he said.
CloudSphere has offices in Dublin and Los Altos, California, with more than 100 employees, close to half of whom are based in the Irish office.
The company is to provide a cloud management platform that enables enterprises to manage their cost of security in the cloud, their identity access, their workloads and applications.
“When we hear talk of the cloud and digital transformation, what that actually means is that companies are looking to ensure that their business is always on,” said McNally.
“Particularly with Covid, companies recognise that running their own data centres is no longer a viable long-term solution. So what we’re seeing is an increasing rush to the cloud, which is the area where iQuate had focused its business.
“And the logical next step is managing and governing those businesses and services in the cloud. And that’s the area where Hypergrid has focused.”
CloudSphere’s unique offering is that it is now able to both accelerate the move to the cloud for a business and to provide governance at the application level in the cloud, he said.
“That is something that doesn’t exist today and which the public cloud providers, such as Google, Microsoft or Amazon, do not provide. While those companies will provide you with a safe place in which to run your business in the cloud, it is up to you how you manage that and that is where CloudSphere comes in.”
Atlantic Bridge managing partner and executive board chairman at CloudSphere, Kevin Dillon said that public cloud adoption “had created a number of compelling opportunities for disruptive innovation”.
“We see a growing need for cloud governance as organisations mature in their use of the cloud,” he said.
“We are thrilled to partner with CloudSphere to help accelerate their ability to bring application-centric cloud governance innovation to the market.”