GrowthWorks and GrandBanks Capital have announced a $7.5M Series B investment in xkoto. The startup, based in Toronto, is a leading provider of database load balancing solutions. The funding will be used to expand support of multiple database and ISV platforms, grow its U.S. presence, and accelerate sales. xkoto already counts big customers including UnitedHealthcare, Genworth Financial, InGrid, Travelport, and leading Wall Street investment firms.
While the use of load balancing technology is already widespread for deployments of web and app servers, corporate data centers have only recently begun to seize the technology and capture the associated benefits (improved performance, lower consumption of system resources, and the viability of using inexpensive commodity hardware). xkoto claims savings of up to $295,000 on the initial hardware/software and recurring savings of $60K per year for each system replaced with a commodity system using GRIDSCALE, their software product.
In addition to funding xkoto announced today a new Boston based CEO, David Patrick. David hails from Novell where he managed the $450 million Linux, Open Source, and Platform Services Group. Co-founder Albert Lee will become Chief Strategy Officer. Khalil Barsoum an industry veteran and Tim Wright of GrandBanks Capital, have joined xkoto’s board of directors which includes Roger Chabra of GrowthWorks, Mark Stirling of Treadstone Associates, and co-founder Albert Lee.
This round is exciting as it represents continued interest in Canadian software startups. Is a move south of the border imminent? No decision has been made according to Roger Chabra of GrowthWorks. “The CEO is Boston-based solely because he was too good a candidate to pass up.” Rather than get all worked up about headquarter relocation, lets try celebrating it as both a fact of startup life in Canada and more importantly a sign of success in a larger market.
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