{"id":650316,"date":"2013-04-03T09:00:38","date_gmt":"2013-04-03T13:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/?p=626900"},"modified":"2013-04-03T09:00:38","modified_gmt":"2013-04-03T13:00:38","slug":"ignition-raises-150m-fund-opens-silicon-valley-office-to-back-enterprise-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/650316","title":{"rendered":"Ignition raises $150M fund, opens Silicon Valley office, to back enterprise IT"},"content":{"rendered":"

More evidence that boring enterprise IT is not so boring anymore<\/a>:\u00a0Ignition Partners<\/a> has launched (and already closed) a new $150 million fund focused on technologies that businesses will buy and implement.<\/p>\n

\"enterprise<\/a>The Bellevue, Wash.-based early-stage VC firm will also open an office in Palo Alto, Calif. to better attack these opportunities, said Frank Artale, general partner who will run this new fund, informally dubbed Ignition V. The company brought on Nick\u00a0Sturiale, a new partner, to run that office.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe think that businesses and people who work in businesses have been largely underserved for the past 15 years,\u201d \u00a0Artale said in a recent interview.<\/p>\n

The goal of the dual offices is to promote cross-pollination and collaboration.\u00a0\u201dWe want to do real social networking here \u2014 not just Facebook stuff,\u201d Artale added. \u201cPalo Alto and the Bay Area are super important as great entrepreneurial engines \u2014 Cisco, Oracle and other companies down there spit out great entrepreneurs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Goal: Apps that combine consumer ease of use with enterprise utility<\/h2>\n

Ignition has some credibility in the enterprise. Several team members \u2013\u00a0including Artale, John Connors, and Cameron Myhrvold \u2014 are former Microsoft executives. And previous investments include Cloudera, Splunk, Zenprise, DocuSign, Opscode, Parse and Bromium.<\/p>\n

New enterprise applications have to work well and look good on laptops and PCs, but also on tablets and phones as the consumerization of IT trend continues, he said.<\/p>\n

Artale which described the new fund as \u201cslightly oversubscribed\u201d \u00a0took three months to fund. Investors include new and existing university endowments, pension funds and investment companies. Ignition V is smaller than the previous fund, which weighed in at $400 million but will also focus more \u2014 eschewing investments in telecom and consumer internet companies, Artale said.<\/p>\n

The notion that enterprise IT is back as a hot category is cropping up all over. New vendors \u2014 large and small \u2014 are building consumer-grade products but for business use. Pivotal Initiative chief Paul Maritz spoke in depth about this<\/a> at the recent Structure: Data conference in New York and the topic will doubtless crop up again at Structure<\/a> in San Francisco in June.<\/p>\n

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