FTVentures and Globespan Capital Partners Co-Lead Round Also Featuring Re-Investments from Matrix Partners, Sigma Partners and Imlay Investments
ALPHARETTA, GA, July 14, 2008 – OpenSpan, Inc., a worldwide leader in desktop productivity and SOA acceleration software, today announced that it closed $13 million of C-round venture capital funding. The round was co-led by FTVentures and Globespan Capital Partners, and included re-investments from Matrix Partners, Sigma Partners and Imlay Investments. The funding will help OpenSpan accelerate its growth with strategic new hires, expanded operations, including international markets, and continued investments for building out the company’s innovative client-side integration technology.
With the recent release of the OpenSpan Platform v4.0, the industry’s preeminent solution for the rapid service-enablement of desktop and legacy applications, OpenSpan continues to be the leading innovator in the application and data integration market. In 2007, OpenSpan revenues grew 440 percent with the company signing up 30 new customers, nearly half of which came from outside of North America. OpenSpan’s 2008 revenue has already exceeded all of 2007 and the company will use the new funding to maintain this momentum.
“As a growth capital investor in software companies that deliver exceptional value to the financial services industry, FTVentures is very familiar with the desktop productivity and legacy modernization challenges that OpenSpan addresses,” said Liron Gitig, principal at FTVentures. “Five of the financial institutions in our Global Partner Network already rely on OpenSpan to improve customer service, drive productivity gains, create up-sell revenues and ensure compliance. We are highly confident that the OpenSpan Platform will deliver exceptional value throughout the financial services industry and across other industries as well.”
“OpenSpan has experienced widespread adoption of its technology on a global basis, and we feel the company has the infrastructure and leadership team in place to build on this growth,” said Dave Fachetti, managing director, Globespan Capital Partners. “With an extremely unique approach to application integration, OpenSpan is well positioned to continue its global expansion, helping enterprises accelerate SOA deployments and streamlining desktop environments to drive business efficiency improvements.”
“We are always excited to re-invest in companies that have already proven the ability to successfully develop, market and support their products,” said David Skok, general partner at Matrix Partners. “Since day one, OpenSpan has achieved great traction in the market, and the company continues to exceed our revenue expectations. We are looking forward to participating in OpenSpan’s continued growth.”
“With its award-winning integration technology, stellar management team and an IT market hungry for legacy modernization and SOA acceleration technologies, OpenSpan is ideally positioned for rapid growth,” said John Mandile, managing director at Sigma Partners. “We are excited about the company’s performance to date and look forward to an even more successful 2008.”
“In today’s challenging global economy, organizations recognize that they need to do more with less, both in terms of people and technology,” said Francis Carden, CEO of OpenSpan. “Enterprises are increasingly choosing OpenSpan to integrate the legions of un-integrated applications that were a result of years or custom development projects and mergers and acquisitions. OpenSpan expects to deliver productivity improvements to an ever-increasing number of global enterprises and the support of our investors will make this possible.’
OpenSpan also announced that Dave Fachetti, managing director, Globespan Capital, will join OpenSpan’s board of directors and Liron Gitig, principal, FTVentures will join as a board observer.
About FTVentures
FTVentures provides growth capital to companies seeking to finance organic expansion, recapitalizations, build-ups and buyouts. The firm invests in software and business services companies that derive value from its unmatched Global Partner Network, which includes many of the world’s leading financial institutions. FTVentures’ Global Partner Network provides the firm with a unique vantage point into the business driven IT and operating challenges of the global enterprise. Founded in 1998, FTVentures currently has over $1 billion under management and offices in San Francisco and New York. For more information, please visit www.ftventures.com.
About Globespan Capital Partners
Globespan Capital Partners is a leading global venture capital firm investing in information technology companies. The firm’s investment team has a proven track record based on partnering with management teams to build strong, successful companies. With offices in Boston, Palo Alto and Tokyo, Globespan invests in companies all across the U.S. and in Japan on behalf of a global base of limited partners. More information about Globespan Capital Partners is located online at www.globespancapital.com.
About Sigma Partners
Founded in 1984, Sigma Partners is a leading early-stage venture capital firm. The Sigma team uses their deep operational experience to provide entrepreneurs with practical strategic counsel through every phase of company growth. With over $2 billion under management and bicoastal offices, Sigma invests in innovative technology startups across the United States. The team is currently investing Sigma Fund 8, a $500 million fund raised in 2007. Some of the market leading companies in which Sigma has invested include Atria, Cascade, Clarify, EqualLogic, Internet Security Systems, KLA-Tencor, m-Qube, Octel, Topio, VeriFone, Vermeer, Vignette and Virtusa. For more information, please visit www.sigmapartners.com.
About Matrix Partners
Matrix Partners is an early stage venture capital firm that fosters long-term partnerships with entrepreneurs and works closely with them to help build significant, industry-leading technology companies. The firm has generated stellar returns over three decades and has delivered several of the industry’s top-performing funds of all time. Matrix Partners has offices in Massachusetts, Silicon Valley, India and China. Matrix Partners has been fortunate to be a part of the creation of innovative, game-changing companies such as Apple Computer (Nasdaq: AAPL), SanDisk (Nasdaq: SNDK), Veritas Software (Symantec), Alteon WebSystems (Nortel), Aruba Networks (Nasdaq: ARUN), Netezza (NYSE: NZ) and JBoss (Red Hat).
About Imlay Investments
Imlay Investments, Inc., an Atlanta-based venture/angel capital firm founded by John P. Imlay, Jr., former Chairman of Dun and Bradstreet Software, was developed to encourage the development of high technology companies based predominantly in the Atlanta area. Imlay’s prior portfolio companies include Internet Security Systems, Knowledgestorm, Synchrologic, and Tradex Technologies.
About OpenSpan, INC.
Global 2000 enterprises leverage the OpenSpan Platform to integrate applications, service-enable legacy systems, automate business processes, extend functionality and build new composite applications in order to realize immediate value on their IT investments. OpenSpan and its partners utilize the company’s unique approach to integration to accelerate service-oriented architecture (SOA) deployments and increase enterprise desktop productivity. OpenSpan received the 2008 SIIA CODiE Award for Software Newcomer of the Year, the 2008 Editors’ Choice Award from Redmond magazine and the 2007 Product of the Year Award from Customer Interaction Solutions magazine. A venture-backed company, OpenSpan is headquartered in Alpharetta, GA. More information about OpenSpan is located online at www.openspan.com.
Contacts
Joe McGonnell
OPENSPAN, INC.(678) 527-5400
jmcgonnell@openspan.com
Keith Giannini / Kevin Carter
SCHWARTZ COMMUNICATIONS(781) 684-0770
openspan@schwartz-pr.com