Cloud company Elastra gets $12M from Amazon

August 5, 2008 | Anthony Ha | Comments | |

Elastra, a company that helps manage applications in the Internet cloud, has raised $12 million in new funding.

This is Elastra’s second venture round, and it was led by Bay Partners, with Amazon.com and existing investor Hummer Winblad Venture Partners also participating. Amazon’s backing is particularly impressive, since its Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) makes Amazon one of the most important companies to cloud computing in general, and to Elastra in particular, since the San Francisco startup hosts applications on Amazon’s EC2 service.

The last few months have seen a number of significant cloud computing announcements, including the launch of Google App Engine, which allows developers to build and deploy their applications using Google’s infrastructure. On the investing side, Benchmark Capital invested $4.5 million in Elastra competitor RightScale, open source cloud company 10gen raised $1.5 million from Union Square Ventures and Benchmark and Amazon both contributed to a $15 million second round for Engine Yard, which hosts apps built using the Ruby on Rails framework.

Chief executive Kiril Sheynkman says Elastra’s offering is unique because it can manage individual applications, rather than virtual appliances (i.e. an entire virtual machine), and because it manages applications across private and public Internet clouds. Since its launch in March, Elastra has signed up more than 40 paying customers, and some of the new funding will go toward expanding that customer base.

Elastra raised $2.6 million a year ago.

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About the Author, Anthony Ha

Anthony is VentureBeat's assistant editor, as well as its reporter on enterprise technology, cloud computing, and tech policy. Before joining VentureBeat in 2008, Anthony worked at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco. Reach him at anthony@venturebeat.com. You can also follow Anthony on Twitter.

  • Please read-Americans need to know!!!!!!!!

    NHTSA Hearings 8/4/08

    I just returned from the NHTSA hearings held on August 4, 2008 in Washington D.C., regarding the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for NEW Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards (CAFÉ) for years 2011-2015.

    IMPORTANT FACTS: You will not believe what you are reading.

    1) The 414 pages DEIS analysis was based on an average gasoline price of USD $2.16/gallon for 2011-2020. A calculation approved by the NHTSA administrators/managers. Would you believe it???????????

    2) The new CAFÉ rules were also established, negotiated and pre-approved by the NHTSA’s management and clearly with the influence of domestic automotive companies and their lobbyists. We have now established fuel standards for 2011-2020 that are presently and already met throughout the rest of the Western world today (see below).

    As one guest speaker said today “are they on another planet?”

    NHTSA “NEW Fuel Standards” (2011-2015) decision:

    Automobiles are to achieve 31.2 mpg by 2011 and 35.7 mpg by 2015. Light trucks are to achieve 25 mpg by 2011, and 28.6 mpg by 2015.

    The NTHSA is also setting a goal of 35 mpg on average for 2020.

    America needs to know:

    The European Union is currently establishing standards, with a goal of reaching 48.9 miles per gallon for new passenger vehicles as early as 2012. The current EU standard already requires more than 40 miles per gallon about 15% higher than the U.S. goal set for 12 years from now.

    Japan currently has a standard of about 40 miles per gallon. Japan aims to further improve fuel efficiency by 17% by 2015, reaching 46.9 miles per gallon.

    China has a current average of slightly under 35 miles per gallon. Chinese fuel standards are on target to reach the government’s goal of 35.8 miles per gallon by 2009. China will not only meet, but exceed, the goal just established by the United States for 2020 — more than a full decade earlier.

    Australia is targeting 34.4 miles per gallon by 2010.

    Canada is targeting 34.1 miles per gallon by 2010.

    Under the current administration, purchasing an electric vehicle is becoming more of a necessity rather than an alternative.
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    www.bgelectriccars.com