Barracuda nets $40m VC funding
Vendor prepared for flurry of product activity as a result
Security appliance vendor Barracuda has told channel partners to expect some “significant announcements” as it secured a multi-million-dollar venture capital (VC) injection.
The $40m investment from Sequoia Capital and Francisco Partners is the first of its kind for the vendor. Other companies to benefit from VC funding from the two firms include Cisco, Google, NetScreen and Yahoo!
Barracuda’s flagship products include the Barracuda Spam Firewall, the Spyware Firewall and the IM Firewall. The vendor works with four distributors in the UK: e92plus, Wick Hill, Bell Microproducts and NOXS.
Paul Thackeray, managing director EMEA of Barracuda, said the investment is good news for channel partners.
“One big advantage of taking on this capital is that we can extend our product range. This allows us to be a bigger company and deliver additional products for partners. Resellers are really important to us because we sell wholly through distribution,” he said.
Thackeray declined to comment on whether or not the vendor will make acquisitions with the cash, but he added: “Watch this space.”
Ian Kilpatrick, managing director of Wick Hill, said: “I was delighted to hear of the extra funding. Barracuda’s products are doing very well for us. Hopefully this will help it to provide new products into new areas we wish to penetrate.
“Barracuda has provided some great products to combat spam and it has some great plans to combat spyware. We are feeling very positive about it.”