Thursday, January 22, 2009

$7.4 million for CloudSwitch, Which Aims to Make Cloud Computing Safe for the Enterprise

Better late than never?

Two Boston-area venture capital firms just put the finishing touches on a $7.4 million A round for Bedford, Mass.-based CloudSwitch this week. It's the first investment in a pure-play cloud computing start-up here in Massachusetts that I'm aware of. Matrix Partners incubated CloudSwitch in its offices for much of 2008, and Atlas Venture joined in the funding round.

The company was founded by Ellen Rubin (CEO) and John Considine (CTO), both of whom had earlier worked at other Matrix portfolio companies. Rubin had headed up marketing for Netezza, leaving last February following the company's 2007 IPO; Considine had worked at Pirus Systems, acquired by Sun back in 2002.

Rubin isn't saying much about what they're up to, other than that they're developing software to help enterprises manage cloud computing services. "I don't want to say much for competitive reasons, but we're working with partners and customers now, and building out our offering," she told me today. She said they'll be ready to divulge more in the spring. The company has about ten employees, and office space in Bedford.

Rubin says they're hiring, but there's no listing of jobs on the company's one-page Web site. Rubin says they're working with recruiters, and talking with folks who're part of the founding team's network.

"I've been paying attention to cloud ideas for about 18 months," says David Skok of Matrix. "John [Considine] is a storage guy, but I kept saying, 'Go look at what Amazon is doing. It's totally amazing.' He came back with a cloud idea, and I introduced him to Ellen. Then we spent a lot of time working with them to shape a defensible idea."

Axel Bichara is the Atlas Venture partner who'll take a seat on the board. Also on the board at CloudSwitch are Jit Saxena, CEO of Netezza, and Andy Palmer, a serial entrepreneur who has been involved with Bowstreet, Vertica, Infinity Pharmaceuticals, and Byledge.

The only previous mention of the company I've been able to find is this quick name-check from GigaOm.

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