It’s been a big day for venture capital financings in the Seattle area, from a small seed round for UW spin out Qazzow to $8 million for Tacoma cyberattack tracker IID to $6 million for big data startup Seeq.
Now, here comes the biggest deal yet. 2nd Watch today announced that it has secured $23 million in financing from Columbia Capital and Madrona Venture Group, money that it will use to continue work on helping businesses more easily move applications to Amazon Web Services.
2nd Watch says it has completed 300 public cloud migrations, saving customers cash when compared to other migration solutions. It also offers consulting services, and ongoing maintenance to clients. Customers include Red Lion Hotels and Coldwell Banker.
“The enterprise is drawn to AWS due to its attractive economics and rich feature set, but a move to the cloud can be complex,” said Kris Bliesner, co-founder and CEO of 2nd Watch. “At 2nd Watch, we appreciate the myriad considerations of the CIO and ensure that our customers manage risk while capturing the ongoing benefits of cloud transformation.”
Bliesner previously worked at Microsoft, and most recently served as CIO of Ambassadors Group Inc. Other co-founders at 2nd Watch include Brett Turner — the former COO at Demand Energy and vice president of finance at World Wide Packets — and Jeff Aden — a former executive at Ambassadors Group.
2nd Watch raised $4.2 million last year, and Madrona’s Matt McIlwain sits on the board. Total funding now stands at $28 million, and 2nd Watch employs about 100 people. It competes with Cognizant and Datapipe.
