CloudBees' nabs $10.5M in Series B

The PaaS gets support from Lightspeed Venture Partners and Matrix Partners

CloudBees, a provider of java services for cloud-developers, announced Monday that it has bagged $10.5 million in a Series B round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from existing investor Matrix Partners.  The funding follows the company’s $4 million Series A round in November.

Founded in early 2010, the Platform-as-a-Service is middleware for the cloud, allowing developers to create and deploy applications in the cloud without having to buy and setup specialized hardware.  CloudBees’ RUN@cloud offers an application service directly in the cloud, while DEV@cloud provides the development infrastructure.

The company emerged from stealth mode in August with a lot of JBoss genes flowing through it, having been founded by former JBoss CTO Sacha Labourey.  In CloudBees’ first round of funding, JBoss founder Marc Fluery, and former JBoss VP of strategy, Bob Bickel also participated.

How does CloudBees’ platform compare to the Google Apps engine?  Founder and CEO Sacha Labourey told me that while the Google Apps engine is great for its simplicity, it is often too restrictive for Java and many Java developers run into walls when trying to develop an application using the Google Apps engine, which was created primarily for running apps, not developing them.

"Lightspeed is developing a rich cloud computing portfolio, and we recognize that CloudBees is in a unique position to transform the Java application world with the rapid and widespread adoption of its platform," said Lightspeed's John Vrionis. "They have built the first end-to-end production-ready Java platform for the cloud, and they are already demonstrating that their technology has a positive impact on the way that businesses build and deploy Java applications."

Vrionis will also be joining David Skok from Matrix Partners and CloudBees’ Robert Bickel and Sacha Labourey on CloudBees’ board of directors.

The new funds from this round will be used to power the rollout of new products and expand marketing and sales efforts.