Appcito Closes $7.5m Series A Funding By March Capital Partners, Atlas Venture, The Fabric And A Syndicate Led By Entrepreneur Cheng Wu

Silicon Valley-based startup seeks to transform cloud application deployment and operation

SANTA CLARA, Calif. – December 9, 2014 – Appcito, a new cloud application infrastructure company, today announced that it has raised $7.5 million in Series A funding from March Capital Partners, a venture capital firm; Atlas Venture, an early-stage venture capital firm; The Fabric, a co-creation company; and an investment syndicate led by Cheng Wu, a long-time communications technology entrepreneur.

Appcito was founded to simplify and optimize cloud application delivery for organizations of all sizes. It has developed a cloud-native, unified service, offered on a subscription basis, that empowers application and operations teams to deliver high-performance, highly available, secure and agile applications.

“Appcito addresses critical problems faced by organizations operating cloud applications,” said Kamal Anand, CEO of Appcito. “Existing approaches are either not agile enough for the cloud or they demand too much of application teams’ scarce resources. Appcito makes it extremely simple for operations teams to improve the performance, security and end-user experience of cloud applications, while providing application owners with an attractive subscription-based pricing model.”

“We are excited to partner with the Appcito team as they develop breakthrough ways to address challenges in cloud application operations,” said Sumant Mandal, general partner of March Capital Partners. “Appcito has a clear vision for dramatically improving a potentially huge market, with an excellent team that has the proven discipline to make it happen.”

“Having been associated with the application delivery market for more than 15 years, I appreciate the significance of the market transformation that Appcito is leading,” said Cheng Wu, a serial entrepreneur in the application infrastructure market who was previously founder of Arrowpoint, Acopia, Azuki Systems and Arris Networks. “The move to cloud infrastructure and to micro-services application development models is the trigger for this major transformation, and I look forward to partnering with Appcito in this necessary effort.”

APPCITO’S CLOUD APPLICATION FRONT-END (CAFE) OFFERING REPRESENTS A NEW MARKET CATEGORY

The application services market—consisting of application delivery controllers (ADCs), application acceleration and application security products—is expected to be worth over $6 billion in 2015, according to estimates by various industry analysts. To overcome the limitations of existing appliance-based ADCs within cloud computing infrastructures, Appcito is introducing a cloud-native, service approach—embodied in its Cloud Application Front-End (CAFE) service—that picks up where traditional ADCs leave off.

“We are observing the emergence of application delivery controller capabilities being extended via a cloud-based as-a-service offering. Gartner anticipates this trend to be of increasing importance as the ADC market evolves to serve application traffic patterns that do not follow traditional hub-and spoke/data-center-centric models,” according to the 2014 Gartner, Inc., Magic Quadrant for Application Delivery Controllers.

“Cloud computing is a revolutionary approach to IT that enables users to choose how they’ll acquire or deliver IT services, while eliminating many of the costs and constraints of traditional licensing and provisioning models,” said Chris Lynch, a partner at Atlas Venture. “Appcito makes enterprise applications secure, performant and highly available in this new cloud computing paradigm.” “Enterprises currently face operational headaches, frustrating inefficiencies and high costs when trying to deliver fast, secure applications on the cloud,” said Rajan Raghavan, co-founder and CEO of The Fabric. “Recognizing the need to overcome these challenges, The Fabric co-created Appcito and continues to collaborate closely with the company. We feel that Appcito is a classic example of the right team coming together at the right time to tackle the right high-growth market opportunity.” The Appcito team has extensive background in the application infrastructure market, including senior positions at F5 Networks (NASDAQ: FFIV), Citrix (NASDAQ: CTXS), Barracuda (NASDAQ: CUDA) and Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO).

ABOUT THE FABRIC

The Fabric, a company co-creator, takes a unique approach to inspiring, incubating and investing in the next generation of innovative technology companies engaged in creating a new flexible and efficient network architecture. The Fabric partners with entrepreneurs at early stages, most often starting at the concept stage, specializing in network infrastructure companies with the potential to drive explosive, rapid growth. Appcito is the second of The Fabric’s portfolio companies. Earlier in 2014, The Fabric-funded VeloCloud Networks launched its innovative cloud-delivered WAN cloud networking service, aimed at simplifying branch-office WAN. For more information, visit The Fabric’s website at www.thefabricnet.com and follow the firm on Twitter at @thefabricnet.

ABOUT MARCH CAPITAL PARTNERS

March Capital has a global outlook on innovation and the trends that are changing the way we live and work. With a long history of investing hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital and private financings, the partners and team at March encourage entrepreneurs to share with them their ambition and efforts. Together, March and its portfolio companies work to build smarter companies faster. March Capital invests in all types of technology across all stages of company growth. Past investments of March Capital’s partners include PayPal, Rubicon Project and Ankeena Networks. For more information, visit March Capital Partners.

ABOUT ATLAS VENTURE

Atlas Venture invests in the earliest stages of technology and life sciences innovation, partnering with entrepreneurs solving difficult problems in new markets. Atlas has invested in more than 350 companies in more than 16 countries since its inception in 1980. Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Atlas Venture prides itself on being contrarian, patient and aggressive in its investments. More information can be found at Atlas Venture.

ABOUT CHENG WU

Cheng Wu, a long-time communications technology entrepreneur, founded Arrowpoint Communications in 1997, serving as CEO and chairman until 2000, when the company went public and then sold to Cisco Systems for $5.7 billion, the second-largest purchase by Cisco. Before Arrowpoint, Wu founded Arris Networks, which he sold to Cascade Communications for $145 million in 1996. After Arrowpoint, he founded Acopia Networks, acquired by F5 Networks for $210 million in 2007 and co-founded Azuki Systems, which provides an over-the-top (OTT) media delivery platform enabling content publishers and service providers to deploy TV Everywhere on multiscreen devices. Wu was named to InteractiveWeek magazine’s ‘Top 25 Unsung Heroes of the Internet’ in 2000 and the Key Industry Player by the Massachusetts Telecom Council in 2002.

ABOUT APPCITO

Appcito, a cloud application infrastructure company, delivers on the promise of the cloud by transforming how cloud applications are deployed and operated. Appcito’s cloud-native, subscription-based, easy-to-deploy Cloud Application Front-End (CAFE) service empowers application teams to deliver high-performance, available, secure applications with continuous deployment. By providing end users with more rewarding application experiences, CAFE enables application owners to attain greater business agility, cost savings and competitive advantage. Appcito has its headquarters in Santa Clara, Calif. More information is available at www.appcito.com.