Symplified, which provides identity and access management tools for cloud applications, has raised $20 million in Series C funding led by Ignition Partners. Existing investor Allegis Capital, Granite Ventures, and Quest Software also participated in the financing, which brings the company’s total funding to $38.8 million.

With more than 3.8 million subscribers, Symplified offers a cloud identity and access management service for enterprises. The company provides secure access to SaaS applications like Salesforce, ADP, WebEx, Xactly, Taleo, Success Factors and many others. Clients include HP, Blue Shield, ESPN, Forest Laboratories, Moody’s, Zynga, Netflix, Rambus and Dolby Laboratories.

source: TechCrunch

Enterprise-focused cloud performance analytics company Tidemark, formerly known as Proferi, has raised $24 million in new funding led by Redpoint Ventures with existing investors Greylock Partners, Andreessen Horowitz and Dave Duffield, co-founder and co-CEO of Workday participating.

Tidemark is a Redwood City-based startup funded by Greylock Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, and Dave Duffield and founded by veterans of the business analytics industry. Tidemark offers a set of next-generation enterprise performance management applications on an unified application platform built for the cloud. Leading Fortune 1000 companies are selecting Tidemark as their new standard enterprise performance management platform.

source: TechCrunch

Code 42 Software, a Minnesota-based online backup company for consumers, businesses and the enterprise, has raised $52.5 million in funding led by Accel Partners with participation from Split Rock Partners. This is the first major investment from Accel’s recently announced Big Data Fund, which is dedicated to funding infrastructure and application companies in “Big Data.” This is the first round of institutional investing for Code 42.

Code 42 faces competition from Carbonite, Box and others. The new funding will be will be used to accelerate multi-platform product development and increase sales and marketing efforts internationally.

source: TechCrunch

On January 13, 2012, Symantec acquired LiveOffice, a privately-held cloud-based archiving vendor, for a purchase price of approximately $115 million.

LiveOffice was considered to be a large global provider of cloud-based email archiving, compliance and email continuity solutions. "With the acquisition, we see a big opportunity for better technical integration," said Brian Dye, VP of the Information Intelligence Group at Symantec. "On the eGovernance side, we've done a lot of work integrating our on premise Vault solution with the Clearwell eDiscovery platform (which Symantec acquired in July 2011). We see similar opportunity to drive integration with this."

Dye said that while this strengthens Symantec in archiving, compliance and eDiscovery solutions, whether delivered on-premise, in the cloud, or as a hybrid solution. LiveOffice is being integrated into existing Symantec divisions. They are becoming part of the Information Intelligence Group, and their sales will fold into Symantec's sales organization. Dye said that while this strengthens Symantec in archiving, compliance and eDiscovery solutions, whether delivered on-premise, in the cloud, or as a hybrid solution, LiveOffice will help Symantec assist organizations to store, manage, and discover an increasingly broad range of unstructured information.

As quoted on echannelline-USA, Dye said, "With Exchange and Domino, we can offer a full mail and security offering on-prem or hosted -- from a single vendor. We can deliver tremendous value there."  With LiveOffice, Symantec can provide a complete cloud-based solution for messaging protection. Microsoft Exchange and IBM Lotus Notes and Domino are email applications for large netwroks. They provides businesses with email, calendar, and contacts on the PC, phone & web, so employees can stay connected and in sync.

On Jan 09, 2012, IBM announced it has completed the acquisition of Platform Computing, a privately held company headquartered in Toronto (Canada).

Earlier on October 11, 2011, IBM had announced that it's in definitive talks for agreement to acquire Platform Computing, a global leader in cloud management software for distributed computing environments. More than 2,000 clients, including 23 of the top 30 largest global enterprises. Platform Computing solutions is a major cloud platform and architect enterpirse provider with a revenue of USD 71.6 Million (2010) and employee count of 530.

Research firm Forrester recently ranked Platform’s cloud-management product, called ISF, tops among a handful of competing offerings in the cloud space. In the press release, Helene Armitage, general manager, IBM Systems Software said, "The acquisition of Platform Computing will help accelerate IBM's growth in smarter computing - a key initiative in IBM's Smarter Planet strategy - by extending the reach of our HPC offerings into the high growth segment of technical computing. Our intent is to enable clients to uncover insights from growing volumes of data so they can take actions that optimize business results."

On Jan 04, 2012, IBM announced it has a decided to acquire Green Hat and a aweek later, on Jan 11, IBM announced the successful acquisition of Green Hat. Green Hat is provider of software quality and testing services for the cloud.

In a press statement, Charles Chu, director of product strategy for IBM Software Group’s Rational unit, said that this step will strengthen the IBM cloud initiatives. The goal here is to facilitate agile software development, which remains hampered even now by the need to physically set up and break down test labs as the project progresses, Chu said. GreenHat, with 45 employees is an existing IBM Rational partner and thus integrates already with some Rational tools. Green Hat’s technology will become part of the IBM Rational collaborative lifecycle management (CLM) portfolio.

Over the past decade, IBM has made progress building up its software and services business. Toward that end, IBM Software has bought 70 companies since 2003 (along with Rational Software in 2002 for $2.1 billion.) Continuing that trend will be a big part of incoming CEO Virginia Rometty’s mission. On Jan. 1, 2012, Virginia Rometty formally took the reins as CEO of IBM. As reported by GigaOm, in May 2010, CEO Sam Palmisano said the company earmarked $20 billion for acquisitions over the next five years, and it’s done its best to spend that money. Most recently, it bought DemandTec for $440 million and Emptoris for an undisclosed amount. Last year, on 15 December, IBM acquired Emptoris, a provider of cloud and on-premise analytics software. With 425,000 employees and annual revenue north of $106 billion, IBM is truely the Big Blue.

On jan 12, 2012, desktop virtualisation software provider DeskStream has acquired Belfast (Northern Ireland) start-up WorldDesk. The deal was announced at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, but the financial details were not disclosed.

Founded in 2010, WorldDesk will continue to be based in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and its employees, including co-founders Jonathan Chesney and Claire Moore, will join DeskStream.

Rao Cherukuri founded Silicon Valley start-up DeskStream in 2007. The company has centres in California and in Hyderabad(India). WorldDesk stated in their pres release that they will continue to be based in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and its employees, including co-founders Jonathan Chesney and Claire Moore, will join DeskStream. CEO Cherukuri pointed to how the collusion of DeskStream's thin client technology and the work WorldDesk has done on the management and delivery of workspaces from the cloud could have the "potential to transform the mobile computing market. "This acquisition speaks to the strength of our business and the sector as a whole.

We are already experiencing a sea change in how people view cloud computing and desktop virtualisation," said Cherukuri.

On January 11, 2012, Telefonica Digital announced an exclusive partnership with FeedHenry, a developer of cloud-based mobile application solutions.

The service will be launched by O2 in the UK during Q1 2012 before being rolled out to other Telefónica markets. Telefónica UK Limited is trading as O2 throughout the globe. Under the exclusive agreement, O2 will be the only communications provider in the UK to provide a route to market for the FeedHenry Mobile Application Platform.

“This partnership will be welcome news for any organisation that recognises the power of mobile apps and how they can drive increased revenue, boost employee productivity and enhance the overall customer experience," said Matthew Key, chairman and CEO of Telefónica Digital. “We've enjoyed great success launching a similar platform in Ireland earlier this year and already list Aer Lingus, Diageo and PWC among our customers."

As quoted in their press statement, "Demand for mobile application development and management solutions has exploded as businesses of all types and sizes recognise the importance of mobile apps in driving business success," said Cathal McGloin, CEO, FeedHenry.  He added, in 2012, we see huge increase in the application development landscape. With the rise of social media and enterprise applications, 2012 will experience a significant percentage of increase in IT services deals and business.