INDUSTRY

United Devices, a global leader in grid and infrastructure management software and services, today announced that it has closed $15 million in Series C financing. The funds will be used to accelerate product delivery and expand go-to-market activities in the Manufacturing, Energy, and Life Sciences verticals. The financing was led by a syndicate of European investors, including AGF Private Equity, SG Asset Management, Innovacom, and the French government investment fund FCJE. A number of existing Series A and Series B investors also participated, including Mobius Venture Capital, Constellation Ventures, and Oak Investment Partners. "The only type of currency that matters in today's market is customers," said Aaron Cheatham, Principal at Mobius Venture Capital. "United Devices' revenue growth and customer acquisition rate are clear indicators of a winning value proposition, which led Mobius to renew its commitment to United Devices with a major investment." "Our HPC customers are using UD technology to power very large production grids - thousands, and in some cases hundreds of thousands of devices," said Ben Rouse, President and CEO of United Devices. "They are now ready to take grid mainstream on the business side of the house by hosting commercial applications, like SAP, JD Edwards, SAS, etc. in a shared services paradigm. With this degree of financing in place, we are poised to exploit our HPC leadership position to attack these new virtualization opportunities." In a related transaction last month, United Devices expanded its customer base in global manufacturing/design markets and gained additional infrastructure management products and skills through its acquisition of Paris-based GridXpert - the European leader in distributed resource scheduling. "United Devices is uniquely positioned to address the growing market requirement for virtualized business applications because of the flexibility and redundancy characteristics of its grid technology. It's not just about accelerating applications and performance anymore," said Luc Maruenda, General Partner with AGF Private Equity. "From an adoption perspective, business side users face the same cultural barriers that plagued the HPC market for so long. Management tools are the only remedy, and UD has the most robust portfolio of offerings."