News
PentaSafe Obtains Venture Capital Funding
PentaSafe Inc., a developer of enterprise IT auditing and security management software, has received $15 million in venture funding from Austin Ventures and Access Technology Partners L.P.
PentaSafe will use the investment to expand their product line, accelerate marketing efforts and develop strategic alliances. According to Douglas J. Erwin, Chief Executive Officer of PentaSafe, "We are also planning to more than double our staff of 160 employees over the next 12 months."
"We have a longstanding relationship with PentaSafe." said Patrick Lee, Access Technology Partners. "The company's core strategic direction and market potential, coupled with the strength of its management team convinced us that PentaSafe will continue to leverage and benefit from the growth in the emerging e-business landscape."
In the three short years since PentaSafe was founded, it has established itself as a leader in the security software solutions market. The company, headquartered in Houston with offices in Oklahoma City, London and Copenhagen, has 1,200 customers worldwide with over 5,000 software installations.
The architecture of PentaSafe's software allows IT administrators to manage security tasks on multiple, distributed systems from a central point of control - saving time and streamlining efforts.
"Our vision of the future is to continue to provide IT security managers with an easy to implement, yet powerful way to check and maintain the security of enterprise systems, applications and data, all from a desktop computer or laptop," says Erwin.
Austin Ventures is the largest venture capital firm in Texas and the Southwest U.S., with more than $1.5 billion under management. The PentaSafe investment is the most recent company to be funded by Austin Ventures as part of its Business-to-Business E-Commerce and Services initiative, a core focus of the firm's investment strategy. Previous investments by Austin Ventures in this area include IntelliQuest and Altra Energy. Other Austin Ventures portfolio companies include: Vignette, Tivoli, garden.com, Motive Communications, living.com, deja.com, and Pervasive Software.
Access Technology Partners, L.P. is part of Chase Capital Partners and is affiliated with Chase H&Q (formerly Hambrecht & Quist). The fund seeks to invest in companies in a very broad spectrum of technology sectors, including software, communications, Internet, e-commerce, semiconductors, as well as services companies for whom technology is a major enabler. Access Technology Partners is especially focused on the e-business and B to B e-commerce sectors and has made several investments in this sector including Agillion.com, Asera, Cygnus (Red Hat), Icarian, Liberate, Motive Communications, and SciQuest.
For more information, visit PentaSafe at www.pentasafe.com.