07/15/2003

07/15/03--firstRain, Inc., a business monitoring software and solutions provider, says it’s attracted $8 million of Series B funding. New investor Ampersand Ventures led the round, joining existing investors St Paul Ventures, Diamondhead Ventures and Myriad Investments.

The company also announced the appointment of Marc Dulude and Charles Yie of Ampersand Ventures to the firstRain Board of Directors, with Dulude assuming the role of Chairman. Formerly President and CEO of Moldflow, Dulude brings more than 11 years experience as a senior information technology executive to firstRain, including serving as Senior VP of Marketing at Parametric Technology and in various positions at Nortel Networks. Steven C. Walske, firstRain’s former Chairman, will remain on the board as a Director.

firstRain will use the additional funds to continue its sales and marketing efforts, and to further develop its platform and solutions suite. Many of the world’s leading corporations deploy firstRain business monitoring, market intelligence, and portal publishing solutions, the company says. firstRain says its solutions “accelerate the pace and quality of critical business decisions by providing users with fresh, relevant, high-quality information and events, while reducing the cost and difficulty of managing multiple data sources from both inside and outside of the corporate firewall.”

As firstRain describes it, its platform is comprised of three products:

--discoveryServer, which monitors both 'known' and ‘unknown’ sources of information, acting as a crawler and vertical search engine

--viewServer, which provides access to applications and content by enabling users to extract applications or content and re-use them as portlets, mobile applications, or even Web Services

--eventServer, a publish-subscribe messaging system that provides XML content-based routing. Based on open standards, eventServer can handle thousands of subscriptions simultaneously.

These products are used to build solutions that are accessed via standard desktop clients, mobile devices, corporate portals, and dashboards.

" I am proud to announce the successful completion of our Series B round and am pleased to add the expertise of both Marc and Charlie to our Board,” said Gaurav Rewari, CEO of firstRain. “At a time when many startup companies are closing their doors and the financing environment is bleak, this investment is a testament to our technology developments as well as to our success in securing an impressive roster of the leading companies in the technology, financial services, pharmaceutical and manufacturing fields as customers,” he added.

“firstRain is one of the most exciting software companies I have seen in some time, with the team and technology to provide innovative solutions that will change how enterprises do business,” said Marc Dulude of Ampersand Ventures. “I have a strong belief that their products solve pressing business problems, which will enable them to gain real traction with top-tier customers,” he added.