Apprenda Closes $5 Million Investment Led by New Enterprise Associates

ALBANY, N.Y., Nov. 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Apprenda, the creator of SaaSGrid, the world's first SaaS application server, announced today that the company has closed a $5 million investment round led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA), a leading global venture capital firm with a 30-year track record of successful investing in companies including Salesforce.com, WebEx, Juniper Networks and XenSource. Existing investor High Peaks Venture Partners also participated in the round of funding.

With SaaSGrid, Apprenda has changed the way that software is built and delivered, providing a solution to the architecture and management complexities of delivering software across distributed web scale environments. Cloud computing is driving software companies toward on-demand delivery models and enterprises toward aggregating internal and external compute resources into cohesive delivery networks for their internal software. SaaSGrid, a distributed application execution layer, mitigates the traditional burdens associated with tackling these trends. As a result, SaaS companies and enterprises alike can dramatically reduce time to market and service delivery costs.

"In the current economic climate, far fewer venture investments are being made, so we view this funding as a strong vote of confidence in our product, technology and team," said Sinclair Schuller, CEO and co-founder of Apprenda. "Our investors recognize that SaaSGrid's technology will play a key role in the transformation of software architecture and delivery. We're already seeing our SaaSGrid customers achieving 30-60 percent reductions in software development and deployment costs, and taking their on-demand solutions to market at a much faster rate."

With this new investment, Peter Sonsini, Partner at NEA, and Tom Grossi, Principal at NEA, will join Apprenda's board of directors. Current board members include: Sinclair Schuller, CEO of Apprenda, Jonathan Stillman, of High Peaks Venture Partners and Michael Seckler, co-Founder of Employease (acquired by ADP).

"As an investor in some of the world's most successful SaaS and infrastructure software companies, NEA has witnessed first-hand the challenges of deploying applications at massive scale," said Tom Grossi, Principal at NEA. "We believe SaaSGrid addresses a tremendous need in the market, enabling the efficient deployment of SaaS offerings and private software delivery clouds."

About Apprenda
Apprenda is the creator of SaaSGrid, a powerful SaaS Application Server that eliminates the difficulties of building and delivering Software as a Service. SaaSGrid greatly reduces the barrier to entry for SaaS by overcoming significant technical hurdles like multi-tenancy and grid scalability, while at the same time providing "out of the box" application services like metering and monetization, billing and subscriber management, and much more. This leaves developers with one job: to build on-demand software that meets customers' needs without worrying about the difficulties of on-demand software architecture.

For more information visit Apprenda's website at: http://www.apprenda.com.

About NEA
New Enterprise Associates, Inc. (NEA) is a leading venture capital and growth equity firm focused on helping entrepreneurs create and build major new enterprises that use technology to improve the way we live, work and play. Since its founding in 1978, the firm has followed the same core principles: supporting its entrepreneurs, providing an excellent return to its limited partners, and practicing its profession with the highest standards and respect. Through its affiliated funds, NEA focuses on investments at all stages of a company's development, from seed stage through IPO. With approximately $11 billion in committed capital, NEA's experienced management team has invested in over 650 companies, of which more than 165 have gone public and more than 255 have been acquired.

For additional information, visit www.nea.com.