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OpTier Raises US$63M in Fourth Round of Funding
NEW YORK, September 23 /PRNewswire/ -- - Leader in Business Transaction Management Accelerates Company Growth with Focus on Product Line and Market Expansion OpTier(TM), the leader in business transaction management, today announced that it has raised an additional US$47.5 million in funding from new investors Index Ventures and Morgan Stanley and existing investors Pitango Venture Capital, Carmel Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Gemini Israel Funds and strategic partner Cisco. The company has also secured a US$15M credit line with Plenus Venture Lending. The funding is a reflection of investors' confidence in OpTier's current and future growth prospects. In the past year, OpTier further accelerated and broadened its deployments in Fortune 500 organizations, generating significant sales growth. Along with continued product innovation, OpTier's exceptional momentum has strengthened the company's position as the leader in Business Transaction Management (BTM). OpTier's management team will use the funding to aggressively pursue plans to enhance and broaden the company's offerings in the BTM market via acquisition and organic development, fueling sales and marketing and expanding industry partnerships. The company is currently building its staff through employee recruitment in the U.S., Europe and Israel. "OpTier has repeatedly succeeded in winning strategic customer deals and creating valuable partnerships with the world's largest organizations," said Bernard Dalle, Partner with Index Ventures. "We believe the company is well positioned for rapid growth across markets and geographies in one of the top priority areas for enterprise IT. We are excited to lead this investment round." "OpTier addresses the critical need for increased performance and high availability from technology services in today's competitive markets," said Thomas Mosimann, Executive Director with Morgan Stanley. "Morgan Stanley seeks to partner with exactly these kinds of companies that possess a combination of a differentiated offering, a huge addressable market, and a strong management team." OpTier's CoreFirst(R) tracks business transactions through a complex infrastructure, automatically discovering the interconnections of each transaction, and then mapping them to a business service. By uniquely identifying all transactions, OpTier provides a real-time picture of every transaction throughout IT infrastructures. It identifies and reacts to changes in the infrastructure in real-time, using this information to reduce outages, quickly isolate and repair problems, improve operational efficiency, better align IT with business priorities and lower overall costs. Since the debut of CoreFirst in 2005, OpTier has been recognized by the industry for its unique approach to BTM. It has gained the trust of many Fortune organizations that today use CoreFirst to assure the timely execution of their key business activities across a diverse set of critical and complex IT services. "With CoreFirst we have created a new platform for managing IT with a business-focused, transaction-driven approach. At global organizations today, hundreds of millions of transactions are flowing faster and more efficiently through complex IT infrastructures using our solutions," said Israel Mazin, CEO & Chairman of the Board at OpTier. "This significant funding will help us achieve our long term growth plans. We are delighted to welcome the investments of prestigious, top-tier investors Index Ventures and Morgan Stanley, along with world-class investors Pitango Venture Capital, Carmel Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Gemini Israel Funds and strategic partner Cisco. Together with the credit line from Plenus, we now have the flexibility to capitalize on a tremendous opportunity to strengthen our market prominence. OpTier is viewed by the industry as an excellent company, and we aim to continue to inspire confidence with our customers and partners." About OpTier OpTier(R) harnesses the power of real business transactions with its unique Business Transaction Management (BTM) software solutions. The CoreFirst(R) product assures that business transactions flow smoothly within IT applications and infrastructure without bottlenecks or outages, for improved end-user experience and reduced cost. CoreFirst's Active Context Tracking(TM) (ACT) technology delivers end-to-end visibility -- of all business transactions, across all tiers, all the time -- by continuously discovering the links between IT components and business services. It also prioritizes IT transactions and processes based on business needs, for true IT optimization. For more information, visit http://www.optier.com. About Carmel Ventures Founded in 2000 by pioneers and leaders of the Israeli high tech industry, Carmel Ventures, with over US$600 million under management, is one of Israel's leading venture capital funds focused on Information Technology investments. Led by former entrepreneurs and executives of the software and communications industries, Carmel provides active, hands-on support to its portfolio companies. Carmel is headquartered in Herzliya, Israel and enjoys a worldwide network of industry, strategic and investment resources. Carmel provides significant capital and support through the growth cycle of its portfolio companies and is recognized as a true company building fund in Israel. Carmel's current portfolio is comprised of some of the most promising companies in their respective domains and they are led by an outstanding group of entrepreneurs. Carmel is an affiliate of the Viola Partners Group, a leading innovative private equity investment group with over US$1.5B under management focused on technology-based growth opportunities in Israel. About Gemini Israel Funds A pioneer in Israel's venture capital industry, Gemini Israel Funds has grown to be the leading Israeli seed and early stage fund in the Information Technology arena. The firm, founded in 1993, manages more than US$700 million in five funds. Investments are focused on the areas of Communications and Wireless Technologies, Enterprise Software, Internet, Consumer Electronics and Semiconductors. Through offices in Israel and Silicon Valley, Gemini offers portfolio companies access to top-tier U.S. based investors and a global network of corporate partners. As investment professionals, Gemini's key contributions include an ability to make daring investment decisions and the capability to utilize past operational experience in assisting portfolio companies. Past successes include: Allot, Mellanox, Saifun, Precise, Traiana, Diligent, Butterfly, Commtouch, Ornet, Verisity, Jacada, Ceragon, Riverhead, nLayers, Itemfield and others. For more information please visit http://www.gemini.co.il . About Index Ventures Index Ventures is a leading European venture capital firm active in technology venture investing since 1996. The firm is dedicated to helping top entrepreneurial teams in the Information Technology and Life Science sectors build their companies into market defining global leaders. The firm has offices in Geneva, London and Jersey and focuses on investments from seed through growth stage companies. Recent exits include Skype (the pioneering communications company acquired by eBay); MySQL (the world's most popular open source database recently acquired by Sun), Last.fm (the world's largest social music platform, recently acquired by CBS) and BioXell (BIOX, floated on the SWX in 2007). For more information, please visit http://www.indexventures.com. About Lightspeed Lightspeed Venture Partners is a leading global venture capital firm with over US$2 billion of committed capital under management. Lightspeed's investment professionals and advisors are located in Silicon Valley, China, India and Israel. Over the past two decades, the Lightspeed team has backed more than 150 companies, many of which have become leaders in their respective markets, including Blue Nile, Brocade, Calista, Ciena, DoubleClick, eHealth, Galileo Technology, Growth Networks, Informatica, Kiva Software, LightLogic, Maker Communications, Metasolv, Openwave, Quantum Effect Devices, Riverbed, Sirocco, Virsa Systems and Waveset. For more information, visit the Lightspeed website: http://www.lightspeedvp.com. About Pitango Venture Capital Pitango Venture Capital, the leading venture capital firm in Israel, has been investing in technology entrepreneurs since 1993. With offices in Israel, California and London, Pitango currently manages over US$1 billion in committed capital invested in more than 100 companies. Pitango specializes in providing long-term support and value-added services to its portfolio companies, with a focus on seed to late-stage companies in Communications, Network and Storage, Wireless and Mobile, Enterprise Software and Internet Infrastructure, and Life Sciences including Biotech and Medical Devices. More information about Pitango is available at: http://www.pitango.com. About Plenus Plenus, Israel's leading equity-based debt fund provides credit facilities to revenue stage technology companies and late stage financing solutions to mid-market companies. Plenus' funds, Venture Lending and Mezzanine, manage funds in excess of US$300mm and are backed by Israel's largest financial institutions as well as US and European based investors. To date, Plenus Venture Lending has provided its portfolio companies credit facilities totaling over US$250mm in over 50 deals and has participated in 10 significant exits. Plenus is an affiliate of the Viola Partners Group, a leading innovative private equity investment group with over US$1.7B under management, focused on technology-based growth opportunities in Israel. For more information on Plenus, please visit http://www.plenus.co.il . OpTier, CoreFirst and "Putting First Things First" are trademarks of OpTier Ltd. Michael Wooh Avi Dines OpTier Schwartz Communications, Inc. +1-212-679-2700 +1-781-684-0770 michael.wooh@optier.com OpTier@schwartz-pr.com Web site: http://www.optier.com http://www.gemini.co.il http://www.indexventures.com http://www.pitango.com http://www.plenus.co.il http://www.lightspeedvp.com
