WHEN WE BEGAN THE funding process in December, we weren't certain what the climate would be like. Luckily, we had a number of new venture firms interested in participating in this round because investors are looking for truly innovative ideas. Our original investors have such strong confidence in the future of our product that they opted to cover the entire round, explains Ash Ashutosh, EVP, CTO and co-founder of AppIQ.

The Burlington, Mass.-based storage management software company AppIQ, raised $12 M in Series B. Original investors: Matrix Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners maintained their investment leadership. "The additional investment we're making reflects our belief that AppIQ is truly leading a revolution in open management," notes David Skok, general partner, Matrix Partners.

The latest round of funding brings the total funds raised by AppIQ to $20 million. The company intends to use the additional capital to expand AppIQ's marketing, sales and engineering efforts.

AppIQ enables customers to solve the storage management nightmares they face daily. AppIQ's open standards-based, application-integrated approach to storage management delivers a solid ROI to end users, claims Ashutosh. "Users of AppIQ solution suite have validated our standards-based approach to providing integrated, active storage management for their SANs," says AppIQ chief executive officer Dave Lemont.

Lemont, who stepped in just a few weeks before the second round of funding, has a track record in building software organizations with sustained customer value. But will he be able to sell AppIQ's solution suite? Storage management software market is just emerging and the space is promising. In fact, Lemont sees a rising customer demand.

The success of AppIQ depends on how soon he can get good customer traction.