SOA Software and WSO2 Bring in VC Money

Draper Fisher Jurvetson led a recent $11 Million dollar round of venture capital into SOA Software as a prelude to an IPO by the company. The company has previously raised $30 Million from Redpoint Ventures, Mellon Ventures, Paladin Capital Group, and Palisades Ventures all of whom participated in the most recent round. “This is a critical time in the evolution of the SOA market and the proceeds of this round will help us reach our goal of becoming the first publicly traded SOA infrastructure software company,” chief executive Paul Gigg said in a statement.

Also, Intel Capital has invested $4 Million dollars in WSO2, an open source software company focused on providing integrated Web Services solutions for enterprise developers. Coming quickly on the heels of an investment in Collax, an open source Linux server provider, Intel Capital has invested $4 million dollars into WSO2, a global corporation with offices located in Boston, USA, Portsmouth, UK and Colombo, Sri Lanka. Previous investors in WSO2 include Covalent Technologies, an enterprise open source solutions provider which made a strategic equity investment in WSO2. This partnership enabled Covalent to offer full commercial development and production level support and professional services for Apache Axis to enterprise customers.


Back in April, Cape Clear Software pulled in $15 million in a series D round led by Menlo Park, Calif.-based InterWest Partners, a new investor in Cape Clear. The round also includes investments from Accel Partners, ACT Venture Capital and Greylock Partners, all repeat investors. The new funding will be used to support Cape Clear's global expansion and continued growth in the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) market. Cape Clear has offices in Waltham, Massachusetts and offices in Dublin, London, and San Mateo.

The funding of SOA Software, WSO2 and Cape Clear show venture investors continue to have an appetite for companies focused on SOA and Web Services. The WSO2 and Cape Clear investments indicate a growing trend towards development of software in overseas locations, which has proven to be a source of strength for SOA companies like Systinet (a division of Mercury Interactive) in the Czech Republic, Infravio in Chennai India, SymphonySoft (commercial provider of Mule) in Malta. Most larger software companies develop offshore, but this model is emerging in private, venture backed companies.

SOA Software recently acquired SOA software company Blue Titan. WSO2 recently shipped its flagship product, Tungsten.