In The News

Thomvest Ventures has invested $2 million in Axcient Inc., a provider of backup and recovery technology, topping off the company's Series A round at $8 million.

The company closed the first $6 million of the Series A in September, with a round that was co-led by Allegis Capital and Peninsula Ventures. The valuation was not disclosed.

Thomvest was impressed with Axcient's business model of selling its technology only through IT consultants, said Don Butler, president of Thomvest. "It's the first company [selling software-as-a-service to small and medium-sized businesses] that has a clear role for the channel to play," Butler said.

Axcient sells an appliance and a hosted service that provide businesses with on-site and off-site backup and recovery for laptops, PCs and servers. The on-site appliance, which can be managed remotely, enables companies to store and retrieve data faster than through consumer-focused, Web-based backup offerings.

"The fact that they can do incremental backups overnight and through the Web is a very elegant solution" compared to offerings from EMC Corp.'s Mozy, which is what Thomvest's offices used before becoming an Axcient customer, Butler said.

Axcient's management decided to add to the round because it had seen more customer growth than it expected following the November launch of the company and with it a demand for additional features for its backup platform, said Justin Moore, Axcient's chief executive.

Though he had other interested investors, Moore said he chose Thomvest because it is an evergreen funding, investing the personal wealth of Peter Thomson, and therefore less susceptible to the ups and downs of the venture industry and fund-raising cycle.

Thomvest has been investing in tech companies for the last decade in areas such as software-as-a-service, networking and semiconductors. Past investments include publicly traded iPass Inc. and wireless security company Certicom Corp., which was recently acquired by Research In Motion Ltd.

Axcient has lined up nearly 200 resale partners and "several hundred" customers, Moore said.

This round should be sufficient to take Axcient through 2010, Moore said, though he did not rule out additional financing prior to that.