Softbank Leads $35m Investment in New Moon

ASP infrastructure technology and service provider New Moon announced completing a $35m funding round yesterday, led by high-profile Internet economy investor Softbank Venture Capital.

Network services vendor Novell, Inc. , Internet business accelerator Green Frog Innovations and investment group Vertex Management also joined in the funding round.

New Moon’s turnkey service for independent software vendors and ASPs allows them to offer hosted Windows applications to customers under their own branding. It is based on New Moon’s own technology for distributing Windows application sessions to connected PCs via the Internet.

Softbank executives Heidi Roizen and Brad Feld have both joined the New Moon board to contribute expertise in the independent software vendor (ISV) and service provider communities. Roizen was recently named one of the best venture capitalists in the country by Forbes ASAP (May 29, 2000).

“We’ve combed the industry to find the solution that New Moon offers,” said Roizen. “This technology provides an intelligent, dynamic way to ‘ASPitize’ the software industrys vast investment in Windows applications.”

The New Moon technology runs Windows applications in the data centre while the user interface runs on the client PC desktop. The approach differs from the more established Windows terminal model in that it leaves processes such as mouse control and screen redrawing on the client.

New Moon’s hosting service, colocated at both AboveNet and Exodus to provide full redundancy, includes a range of ASP management functions including user authentication, application provisioning, server load balancing, systems monitoring and administration, and usage metering and billing.

The most high-profile user of the service to date is Autodesk, which uses it to offer a demonstration version of its AutoCad software in partnership with Alta Vista.

Software publishers simply provide their out-of-the-box code to New Moon. New Moon then deploys the application in its data center. When implemented, users simply click on an application icon in their browser to launch and run the application with the full fidelity of an application running locally.

“New Moon’s application delivery and ASP infrastructure technologies will appeal not only to ISVs, but more broadly to telcos, ISPs, and other application hosting services looking to leverage the Internet for software deployment,” added Feld.

• New Moon was profiled in the January 2000 issue of the ASP News Review newsletter, available exclusively to subscribers.