Viola Private Equity has made a growth equity investment of USD7 million in Zend Technologies, a provider of software and services for developing, deploying and managing business-critical PHP applications on-premise and in the cloud.
Viola’s investment adds to the Company’s previous internal round raised from its existing investors, including Greylock Partners, Index Ventures, Azure Capital Partners, Intel Capital, SAP Ventures and others, which was announced in May 2010. All together the financing round amounts to USD16.5 million.
Zend achieved record revenue growth in 2010, signing up a high number of enterprise customers, including NYSE Euronext, General Electric and Cisco. Revenue from the Company’s Web application server product line has grown extensively in 2010, as more companies chose the Zend solution for running their business-critical applications on-premise or in the cloud. With this investment, Zend is well-capitalised for the launch of new cloud offerings, partner initiatives, and expansion of its global sales force to support enterprise business growth.
Viola Private Equity is a USD164 million buyout and growth capital technology fund, affiliated with the Viola Group, a private equity investment group with nearly USD2 billion under management. Joining Zend’s Board of Directors is Harel Beit-On (pictured), Founder and General Partner at Viola Private Equity.
"Adoption of open-source and PHP technologies is a mega-trend among both enterprises and ISVs worldwide," says Beit-On, Founder and General Partner of Viola Private Equity. "When businesses look for cost-efficient solutions to streamline the development and management of their web applications, they come to Zend. The company continues to demonstrate its significant value-add to enterprise customers. The emergence of cloud computing is motivating companies to revisit their platform choices and we believe Zend, with the recent launch of Zend Server and the Zend Cloud Application Platform, is well-positioned to accelerate its penetration and growth in the market."
