Vaultus, a mobile platform company for the enterprise, announced today that it has closed $32 million in second round financing, with an anticipated second closing on additional funds to occur by the end of March.
The Series B round, led by First Union Capital Partners, brings the total invested in the company to over $57 million. The round also includes Research In Motion Limited (Nasdaq: RIMM, TSE: RIM), (212) Ventures, Investcorp, China Industrial Development Bank and @Ventures as participants.
“The additional funding that we have secured in this selective capital market is testimony to the company’s singular focus on enterprise enablement of mobile applications, the attractiveness of our business model and the quality of the management team,” said Ronald E. Spears, president and CEO of Vaultus.
With this most recent investment, the company plans to further product development and expand sales channels. Vaultus delivers mobile data applications to the large enterprise market and its existing client base includes a number of Global 1000 companies, from leading financial institutions such as CIBC World Markets and Credit Suisse First Boston to the largest U.S. based multinational conglomerates in the world.
Vaultus also delivers mobile data solutions to Alliant Exchange, one of the largest food service distributors in the country, as well as to customers in over 20 different vertical markets. Vaultus’ proprietary Java-based mobile platform provides secure wireless access to enterprise applications. Vaultus’ turnkey mobile platform solution is a combination of software and professional and managed services that simplifies the deployment and management of mobile data applications for the enterprise.
“Vaultus is a sound investment to us because they are first movers in developing and delivering a Java-based secure mobile platform that enables mobile data applications,” said David Scanlan, principal, First Union Capital Partners. “With an experienced management team, Vaultus is set apart from its competitors, and they are poised to be a leader in the mobile data industry, a market expected to generate over $50 billion in revenues by 2007.”
The market opportunity for mobilizing the enterprise is rapidly growing. More than half of the Fortune 1000 enterprises are expected to commit 15 percent of all networking service spending to mobile data solutions by 2004, according to Cahners In-Stat Group. Overall, the Gartner Group estimates that the mobile data market is expected to grow from about 170 million subscribers worldwide in 2000 to greater than 1.3 billion in 2004.
“Vaultus provides value-added applications and services that can help increase enterprise productivity for our BlackBerry customers,” said Jim Balsillie, chairman and co-CEO of RIM. “In addition, Vaultus’ commitment to using J2ME (Java 2 Micro Edition) parallels RIM’s support for Java. Java is a fundamentally important technology for application development in the wireless industry.”
Vaultus, formerly MobileLogic, provides enterprises a partnership that delivers workable, usable mobile applications via a combined package of software solutions, professional services and managed services. Headquartered in New York City, and with offices in Denver and Boston, Vaultus is privately held and has secured funding from leading investment firms including First Union Capital Partners, Investcorp/(212) Ventures Technology Fund, Allen & Company Inc., Odyssey Investment Partners, Research In Motion, Estuary Group, CMGI @Ventures, and Hikari Tsushin.
