The money will be spent to market and extend the company’s product line, which includes software that automates and promises to simplify fault-detection and analysis of application performance. It relies on end-user monitoring to help IT address performance issues before they negatively affect the business.
Aternity chief executive Ira Cohen said the software was mostly beneficial to larger companies. The larger the enterprise the better the solution because the number of locations will be greater and the distance from the IT support center will be greater, he said. The more complicated, the better the solution.
Aternity is among several vendors of so-called passive agent-based monitoring, which monitors an application’s usage in real time and at the application level. While other companies, such as HP’s Mercury and Citrix, focus on the single user, Cohen claims Aternity is the only vendor that can also determine from a group of users whether a problem may be at the network or enterprise level.
The recent injection of funds from Intel Capital closed a series B round for Aternity, which also included previous investors. Cohen declined to say how much was raised. The company launched in late 2004 and in early 2005 raised $7.5m in its first round of funding.
So far, it has garnered five large multinational customers, Cohen said, adding that 10 similarly large companies were in proof-of-concept trials with its product.
Cohen said Aternity aims to be profitable by the end of 2008, by which time he expects to have about 40 customers.
When pressed, Cohen said he would consider a buyout offer for the 31-employee company at some future point, but stressed that would be the board’s decision.
Aternity, which is based in Westborough, Massachusetts and has its R&D headquartered in Israel, has also agreed to support Intle’s vPro bundle of laptop and desktop silicon and software that is aimed at business users.
Aternity was among six investment recipients of Intel’s funding arm, which totaled $31m.
