Acta Technology Inc, Palo Alto, California-based provider of data warehousing for packaged applications, said its has raised $7.5m in a second round of venture funding that will be used to ramp up and support its growing business in the US, and support its expansion into Europe and Japan. The company, which was founded in October of 1996, has now raised $9.5m in private financing to date. The latest round was led by new investor Norwest Venture Partners, and included Acta’s original investors, Greylock Limited Partnerships and US Venture Partners. News of the financing comes five months after the introduction and shipment of ActaLink for SAP, the company’s initial product which it claims extracts data from SAP and non-SAP sources; transforms and cleanses the data; and loads it into a data warehouse (CI No 3,364). The company says that the product has seen solid initial acceptance with six confirmed accounts, three of which have been deployed already. In addition to its previously-announced OEM deal with Cognos Software Inc, Acta says it will be announcing more partners in the next 90 days. Also on the horizon are a Unix port and a port to the PeopleSoft ERP package, both of which are promised by the end of the year. Acta says it will most likely go through a third round of private funding before putting the wheels in motion for an initial public offering.
