IaaS provider SingleHop today announced the finalization of $14.8M in venture debt financing in a round led by Silicon Valley Bank with additional participation from Farnam Street Financial Inc. The financing will be used to fund SingleHop’s product development, make strategic investments and further the company’s growth more generally. SingleHop specializes in flexible managed solutions targeted toward the SMB market. Unlike other IaaS managed solutions, SingleHop boasts the capability to tier the degree of its managed hosting offerings in collaboration with the needs of its customers. Zak Boca, CEO of SingleHop, commented on the capital raise as follows:
SingleHop continues to deliver on its goal to provide the most flexible, reliable platform for cloud computing. We are ideally suited for SMBs because we have the scope and breadth of services to design the optimal infrastructure for each client, and we support our customers with a commitment to service beyond support and the best SLAs in the market. This financing ensures we are well capitalized to grow our team and our services and well positioned to make strategic investments as we continue to cement our leadership position.
The SingleHop platform enables the deployment of virtualized infrastructures from bare metal platforms, public clouds, private clouds as illustrated below:
Customers access the SingleHop platform by means of SingleHop’s proprietary LEAP user interface for deploying and managing infrastructures in addition to communicating with the company’s technical support team. LEAP is available via web-enabled access as well as mobile-devices such as smartphones and the iPad. SingleHop’s infrastructure is enabled by four data centers in North America and Europe that serve more than 4000 customers in close to 125 countries.
SingleHop’s unique focus on the SMB tier within the IaaS space positions it strongly to continue growing and establishing credibility in a space bursting with competition for enterprise IaaS customers. That said, SingleHop currently serves enterprise customers and service providers as well, and stands to increase its customer mix of enterprises as it consolidates its market traction as its SMB customers graduate to enterprise status or in conjunction with its increased market traction more generally. Today’s capital raise brings the total funding raised by SingleHop to roughly $42M in combined debt and equity financing by building upon a $27.5M capital raise led by Battery Ventures in April 2012. SingleHop’s strategy of targeting SMBs illustrates how the maturation of the IaaS market is rapidly leading to product differentiation within the IaaS space marked by the emergence of market share leaders that correspond to distinct customer segments within the larger universe market for IaaS products and services.
Cloud Computing Today 