Bitglass Raises Another $25 Million for Cloud Security
In 2013, Bitglass emerged out of Silicon Valley and proceeded to take the cloud computing world by storm. Bitglass was formed as the solution for offering 360 degree data protection for enterprise businesses, whether it be in the cloud, on mobile devices or online. Essentially, Bitglass uses a “SaaS reverse proxy for both control-plane (login/logout) and data-plane (all data) traffic between mobile devices and applications.” Moreover, you don’t need to worry about configuration on your end, and Bitglass features digital watermarking technology to help you track your data.
Well, in January of 2014, Bitglass finally made its public debut. The company initially raised $10 million in Series A funding from NEA and Norwest Venture Partners. Based in Campbell, CA, which is right at the bottom edge of Silicon Valley, Bitglass was founded by Nat Kausik, who is now the CEO. Kausik brings along eight years of work experience with HP, as a principal scientist, in addition to founding companies such as, Arcot and FineGround. Bitglass’s co-founder, CTO Anurag Kahol emerged from being a Director of Engineering at Juniper Networks. Prior to that, he had worked at Cisco for 11 years. In fact, this is Kausik’s fifth startup, but it looks as if it’s quite promising for both Kausik and Kahol.
Fast forward to today, and the company just received another $25 million in Series B round funding. It seems to be the right product, at the right time. Especially given all of the recent revelations around the NSA as well as continuing cyber-attacks, enterprise businesses are weary of the million and billion dollar losses that come along with consumers not trusting the security of their products and services.
Investors who participated in this second round of funding include NEA and Norwest Venture Partners, but there are also some new faces such as SingTel Innov8. Jeff Karras, managing director of SingTel Innov8 shared some information behind his faith in Bitglass, “Data security takes center stage in this era of cloud and mobile. Bitglass is a leader in the US and we look forward to helping them gain global momentum.”
Bitglass features a service called “Total Data Protection” that can manage cloud apps such as Google Apps, Salesforce.com, Office 365, Microsoft Exchange and more. Essentially, businesses no longer have to worry as much about protecting their favorite apps. There was also a large global bank that invested in this second round, but Bitglass signed a confidentiality agreement and is unable to release the name of the banking investor.
With this additional money, Bitglass intends to invest in its sales and marketing arm. Furthermore, it wants to continue to ramp up its Total Data Protection service as it has received much demand since its debut. What’s refreshing is not only is the company offering an innovative and timely way to protect your work in the cloud, but the founders have been around the block once or twice (so to speak), and they’re gaining traction and success.
Bitglass also wants to ensure they stay ahead of innovation by providing valuable statistics to their current and potential clients. Part of their research has found that the main reason why enterprise businesses are slower to adapt to the cloud and mobile is because of security concerns. That makes sense given the potential for reputation and financial loss if consumers find their data unprotected.
Currently, Bitglass has around 40 employees. It receives revenue from its subscription services, which range from anywhere between $5 and $10 per user each month. So, it is both useful and cost-efficient. However, Bitglass has not made public its number of customers. But, they do understand the issues as stated by Bitglass vice president Rich Campagna, “The corporation doesn’t own the network, they don’t own the apps, and they don’t own the device.” So, Bitglass is the avenue created to give their clients more peace of mind.
