We’ve been writing a lot lately about how Ignition Partners is transforming itself into a national firm, doing deals wherever they find them. And here’s the latest example of that. The Bellevue venture capital firm just led a $10 million round in Apprenda, a Clifton Park, New York startup that helps businesses manage cloud-based applications. As a result of the deal, Ignition’s Frank Artale — an early investor in the company — is joining the board.

Previous investors such as New Enterprise Associates and High Peaks Venture Partners also participated.

Frank Artale

Ignition has been investing at a torrid pace this year, and the majority of the bets have been placed on companies outside of the Seattle area. It just led a $20 million investment in San Mateo, California-based Motif Investing, and participated in a $9.2 million round for stealthy San Francisco upstart Bromium. (Artale, a new partner at Ignition, also joined Bromium’s board).

Ignition, founded by former Microsoft and McCaw Ceullar veterans, is taking a closer look at cloud computing upstarts, especially those that tie into the existing Microsoft environment. That’s certainly the case with Apprenda which works in conjunction with .NET. Here’s a quick description:

“Apprenda is a Platform as a Service (PaaS) and framework that empowers an enterprise IT organization with a cloud application platform for building, deploying, and running custom applications based on the Microsoft stack. Apprenda can be deployed on public or private infrastructure, providing flexibility and freedom from lock-in.”

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