In its first round in May 2000, Infravio had raised $7 million from the same investors.

A provider of web services integration and management software, Infravio was founded in 1999 by Srinivas Balasubramanian, Chief Strategist and Mukund Bala subramanian, CTO. Infravio will use the new round of funding to broaden its product development, sales and marketing efforts. In order to drive customer expansion, the company has recently added sales and marketing executives to its management team.

By leveraging an XML-based management model, Infravio has built a platform that assists enterprises to enable existing applications as Web Services, as well as build new Web Services from the ground up. It provides enterprises the control over the development, lifecycle management and runtime execution of its Web Services. Infravio products can be used independently or can complement IBM, Microsoft, Sun, Oracle, BEA and other integration platforms and products.

“Companies require more efficient solutions for application and data integration, and this need is driving the rapid adoption of Web Services," says Jeff Tonkel, president and CEO of Infravio. “This investment will allow us to provide business-critical solutions based on our innovative technology and Web Services expertise, while accelerating the growth of our customer base.”

Tonkel believes that it's going to be a big year for Web services. In fact it has become one of the hottest topic of conversation in many enterprises. ZapThink, an analyst firm, predicts that the market for Web Services-based integration will reach $6.2 billion by 2006.

Competition is getting hotter. There are several vendors like Cape Clear, AmberPoint and Bowstreet offering Web services management tools. A recent report from Jupiter Research suggested that vendors will be hard-pressed to reap profits, while companies that implement web services should prepare for trying power struggles between executives and IT staff. As the market starts to mature, Infravio needs to make a run for it.