StrikeIron Secures $5 Million in New Funding
Ascent Venture Partners Leads Series C Financing to Drive Future Growth
and Widespread Market Adoption
Research Triangle Park, NC – March 13, 2007 – StrikeIron Inc., the leading
provider of live data and business functionality over the Web today announced it
has closed a $5 million Series C round of venture capital funding; adding Ascent
Venture Partners to its list of investors. Returning investors in the round
include The Aurora Funds, Inc. and NC IDEA. The company has received $9.6
million in funding since its launch in 2003.
StrikeIron will use this round of funding to expand sales and marketing
initiatives, accelerate platform and product development efforts, and further
strategic partner programs. The company will also continue to build on the
market success of the StrikeIron Web Services Marketplace, which has been
adopted by thousands of users and a broad range of institutions and enterprises,
including over a dozen Fortune 1000 corporations, including BEA, IBM, Honda
Europe, D&B, Time Warner, Siemens, Nike, Kenwood, and Exclusive Resorts. In
addition to the funding, StrikeIron announced that Matt Fates, principal with
Ascent Venture Partners has joined StrikeIron’s board of directors.
“We believe that StrikeIron is poised for tremendous growth in the SOA and
data services markets. With their groundbreaking Web Services Marketplace, the
company is offering unique functionality that is changing how companies build
applications“, said Fates. “They have created the ability for organizations to
integrate live data into any type of application in a simple, consistent manner.
In addition, the pay-as-you-go model is preferred by today’s IT organizations
that are looking to reduce complexity while cutting costs and increasing
capabilities.”
The StrikeIron Web Services Marketplace provides the world's largest variety
of reliable and trusted commercial Web services. The Marketplace is built on the
StrikeIron Internet Service Bus, a data distribution platform, which allows
developers, publishers and partners to meet the complex challenge of
participating in a Web-based ecosystem including standardized data distribution,
authentication, billing and accounting, usage tracking and reporting, security,
and integrated tools and services.
NC IDEA and The Aurora Funds also continued their investment in StrikeIron,
recognizing the significant market opportunity for commercial Web services to
access real-time data and the persistent need for SOA tools for building
on-demand applications. Analysts estimate that over 80 percent of IT projects
will involve Web services by 2008 and the market is expected to hit about $15
billion by 2009.
“StrikeIron’s success is impressive and the company possesses all of the
crucial elements for continued growth: a strong technology platform, an
experienced executive team with a vision of the future of SOA, alongside a
strong customer base providing feedback for future innovation", said Scott
Albert, managing general partner of Aurora Funds.
“We're delighted to have Ascent Venture Partners lead this round of
investment, along with the continued support of both Aurora Funds and NC IDEA”,
said StrikeIron CEO and President Bob Brauer. “This is a substantial endorsement
for the company that validates both the impact of our technology and the
progress we’ve made thus far.”
About Ascent Venture Partners
Since 1985, Ascent Venture Partners has been dedicated to
partnering with seasoned management teams to build successful technology
companies. Focused on the New England and Mid-Atlantic regions, investments are
sized from $2 to $8 million. Ascent is an active investor, offering strategic
advice, leveraging its broad network and working patiently with portfolio
companies to overcome challenges. Ascent takes pride in the number of
entrepreneurs who return to work with the Ascent team on multiple investment
opportunities. Ascent has raised four venture funds totaling $400 million and
has invested in over 90 companies. Ascent is currently investing out of the
firm's fourth fund, a $140 million fund launched in 2004. More information is available at
www.ascentvp.com.
About The Aurora Funds
Founded in 1994, The Aurora Funds is a venture
capital firm that provides capital and strategic help to entrepreneurs with
early stage life sciences and information technology companies in the
Southeastern and mid-Atlantic United States. The firm has more than $200 million
of total capital under management and is currently investing out of its fifth
fund. The firm has the capacity to invest between $4 million to $8 million
throughout the life cycle of an investment. More information is available at
www.aurorafunds.com.
About NC IDEA
NC IDEA provides grants, loans and traditional venture
capital to help young companies between seed funding and Series A financing. NC
IDEA further supports these companies by leveraging its strong, strategic
partnerships and alliances to help the companies through research phases,
business challenges and growth goals. NC IDEA is committed to supporting North
Carolina's economic development by ensuring young, innovative companies grow,
create jobs and become contributing business leaders. For more information,
visit
www.ncidea.org.
About StrikeIron
StrikeIron is the leader in providing innovative solutions for delivering data
over the emerging Internet. The company’s innovative Web Services Marketplace
provides a technology platform, micro-transaction management and a consistent
interface across many XML-based Web services from multiple, diverse sources.
This allows business users, application developers and enterprise IT
professionals to customize and integrate external data sources and additional
external functionality into enterprise, Web, and composite applications.
Currently, StrikeIron provides over 100 live data sources and business
functions from organizations such as Cortera, D&B, Gale, MapQuest, Midnight Trader,
Tax Data Systems, The Sports Network, and Zacks.
StrikeIron also offers IronCloud™, the only comprehensive Web services delivery
platform that opens up new channels for data distribution and consumption
through Web Services. Enterprises of all sizes can now reduce the cost and
complexity of managing the challenges of data distribution which include
leveraging an existing external hardware and software architecture, controlling
and metering access and usage, external monitoring for 24x7 reliability, full
usage analytics, as well as multiple authentication scenarios and instead
concentrate their focus on making information easier for partners, customers,
and distributed business units to access and use. StrikeIron delivers value to
over 1,500 customers and partners such as Avaya, BEA, Delivery.com, IBM, Honda
Europe, D&B, Siemens, Nike, Swarovski, ShoeBuy, and Exclusive Resorts. For
more information, visit www.strikeiron.com.
###