Sumo Logic, a startup focused on enterprise log management and analytics, has raised $15 million in Series B funding round led by Sutter Hill Ventures, with participation from previous investors Greylock Partners and angel investor Shlomo Kramer. The new funding brings the startup’s total venture capital backing to $20.5 million.

Today, Sumo Logic emerged from stealth to unveil its log management and analytics platform, aiming to help companies to uncover operational and security insights buried in enterprise log files. The startup was founded by ArcSight veterans Christian Beedgen and Kumar Saurabh in 2009, to provide a cloud based system for managing the massive amounts of enterprise log data.

similar to other cloud based data management offerings, Sumo Logic wants to eliminate the need for expensive on premise-based log management applications. Using algorithms, the service provides enterprises with operational and security insights from their log data in real time, at a massive scale. We’re told the service can analyze petabytes of log-data a day.

Sumo Logic’s architecture features an elastic petabyte scale platform that collects, manages and analyzes enterprise log data, reducing millions of log lines into valuable operational insights in real time. The cloud-based service is powered by Sumo Logic’s Elastic Log Processing, which is a scalable architecture that enables log analytics at a large scale; and LogReduce, which are a set of adaptive algorithms that reduce millions of logs into a small number of patterns.

The platform also features real-time interactive forensics and push analytics to provide proactive detection and notification of trends, changes and anomalies in data. Sumo Logic’s service also mines global trends and anomalies across customer organizations.

As Beedgen explains, there is a major opportunity behind providing a cloud-based alternative to log management because enterprises have real problems managing and analyzing log and machine data. He says existing products can suck in data but have poor analytics and data analyzation with too many false positives.

Sumo Logic has an innovative approach, he says, because it provides a scalable elastic architecture, applied machine learning for IT intelligence, and the horsepower to process massive amounts of IT data.

The new funding will be used towards expanding engineering and marketing. Sumo Logic faces competition from Splunk, which just filed for an IPO.

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Enterprise-focused cloud performance analytics company Tidemark, formerly known as Proferi, has raised $24 million in new funding led by Redpoint Ventures with existing investors Greylock Partners, Andreessen Horowitz and Dave Duffield, co-founder and co-CEO of Workday participating. This brings the total amount raised to more than $35 million. Redpoint partner Geoff Yang will join Tidemark’s Board of Directors.

Founded by Romanian entrepreneur Christian Gheorghe, the Tidemark Enterprise Performance Management Platform delivers real-time, risk-adjusted metrics management; strategic, financial, operational planning and forecasting; and profitability modeling applications.

Tidemark’s premise is that enterprises are investing billions yearly in traditional business intelligence systems that were not built for today’s data deluge and do not provide the forward-looking analysis that is required of businesses today.

Basically Tidemark monitors and analyzes business data, including key performance indicators, key risk indicators and other data for enterprise business planning functions. The software can produce full profit and loss reports by product, customer, supplier and channel to understand the detailed drivers of cost and improve margins.

The web applications are built with a HTML5 user interface and includes application components such as processes, goals, dimensions, KPIs, calculations, risks and controls. Tidemark also features integrations with a number of cloud and on-premise systems for sourcing structured and unstructured data including PDFs, MS Office documents and blogs.

The new funds will be used for customer acquisition.

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AppDynamics, which specializes in application performance management (APM) solutions for high-maintenance Web apps, has raised $20 million in funding in a Series C round led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

Previous backers Greylock Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners also participated.

With even mission-critical software applications increasingly moving to distributed, cloud-based architectures, AppDynamics’ solutions aim to assist organizations in managing such environments, helping companies like Netflix, Priceline and TiVo monitor and scale their production applications.

The company says more than 60,000 people have downloaded AppDynamics Lite, its free Java troubleshooting solution, to date.

AppDynamics has now raised $36.5 million in total.

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As companies move their data out from behind firewalls into the cloud and employees use self-provisioned mobile devices, infosecurity must change. That’s why cybercrime prevention provider ThreatMetrix will announce tomorrow its acquisition of TrustDefender, which detects malware-based attacks. ThreatMetrix can now offer an integrated fraud protection solution that verifies the identity and integrity of any device trying to access secure data. If an endpoint has been compromised through malware or identity theft: access denied.

Reed Taussig, ThreatMetrix’s CEO tells me the acquisition was made with a combination of cash and stock. It was bankrolled by ThreatMetrix’s 300% year on year revenue growth and the $12 million funding round it took in October 2010.

TrustDefender co-founder and CEO Andreas Baumhof will become the new ThreatMetrix CTO. The majority of the Australian TrustDefender’s team was picked up, but won’t be relocating to ThreatMetrix’s San Jose headquarters. TrustDefender took $16 million in funding from Nexbix Ltd in March 2010.

ThreatMetrix’s device identifications system looks at over 250 aspects of an endpoint device to determine its integrity. — where is it, hidden proxies, if text is being rendered in foreign language, or if that email address has been used to make a request from multiple continents. TrustDefender detects malware and other threats including trojans, Poison Ivy, and man-in-the-browser-attacks. It services financial institutions, SaaS providers, ecommerce companies, and government.

Before now, companies had to seek out separate vendors for device identification and malware detection. Taussig tells me “The identification of malware on a device should be a feature of device identification. We were fortunate to have found a malware ID company that has leading edge technology with referenceable, high-end customers that recognize this is a match made in heaven. The acquisition provides huge advantages, as clients can be supported by a single product.”

Additionally, ThreatMetrix has just signed a partnership with major credit bureau TransUnion. This will help it verify the authenticity of user biographical and financial data to protect logins and payments.

Instead of only accessing firewalled data through dedicated, pre-screened devices, employees now accessing the cloud with their own laptops, tablets, and phones. Let’s be honest. Who knows what those devices are being used for in the off-hours? It’s therefore more important than ever for IT departments to have a strong device ID security system. Otherwise their company’s source code, intellectual property, design docs, customer names or credit card numbers could be at risk.

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Mu Sigma, a provider of analytics and data-driven decision support services for enterprise customers, has raised $108 million in funding in a round led by growth equity firm General Atlantic.

The financing comes about half a year after Mu Sigma raised $25 million from Sequoia Capital, which also participated in this round.

Headquartered in Chicago with most of its 1,500+ employees working out of Bangalore, India, Mu Sigma is a professional services firm that helps companies analyze ‘big data’ to “institutionalize decision support”.

In a statement, Mu Sigma says it is already profitable and able to finance its operations on its own, but that it raised more venture capital to ‘accelerate growth’.

A portion of the new capital will be used to purchase shares held by existing shareholders, but the company did not disclose which shareholders and how much of the $108 million injection will be reserved for the buybacks.

Mu Sigma did say all current shareholders will retain stakes in the company.

More in this Wall Street Journal article.

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Cyber-Ark Software, which provides identity management solutions to financial institutions and other enterprise customers worldwide, has raised a healthy $40 million in venture capital funding in a round led by Goldman Sachs and Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP).

Founded in 1999, Cyber-Ark had previously raised $25 million from angel investors and VCs.

The company provides information security solutions to roughly 1000 enterprise clients, enabling them to protect users, applications and data against both insider and external threats.

The company has 170 employees worldwide and is headquartered in the US, with R&D operations located in Israel.

The $40 million investment deal includes the purchase of shares from existing shareholders by Goldman Sachs and JVP, as well as the provision of growth capital for the company.

As part of the round, JVP founder and chairman Erel Margalit will be appointed chairman of the company, and Goldman Sachs VP David Campbell will be joining Cyber-Ark’s board.

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PowerCloud Systems, a spin-out of Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) that offers a ‘networking-as-a-service’ platform for OEMs and service providers, has raised $6 million in Series B funding in a round led by Qualcomm Ventures, with prior backers Walden Venture Capital, Javelin Venture Partners and PARC participating.

The capital will be used to enhance the company’s online software platform, CloudCommand.

The CloudCommand platform enables networking OEMs and service providers to integrate cloud capabilities with their wireless and wired networking equipment and to deliver networking-as-a-service-based solutions for SMBs.

CloudCommand’s initial implementations support Wi-Fi networking, and in 2012 the company says it will expand into additional networking categories.

PowerCloud Systems is not only a spin-out from PARC, but its technology is also supported by intellectual property developed at the research center, including 10 patents in areas ranging from cloud-virtualized network controllers to usable security.

The company has raised approximately $10 million to date.

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Database virtualization startup Xeround has raised $9.3 million in Series C funding Benchmark Capital, Giza Venture Capital, Ignition Partners and Trilogy Partnership. This brings the startup’s total funding to over $30 million.

Xeround offers a cloud database-as-a-service for MySQL-based applications. Currently the service is offered for EC2 MySQL databases, as well as Rackspace-MySQL and Heroku-MySQL applications.

Xeround’s cloud database allows service providers, ISVs and customers to run their applications in the cloud and automatically scale up or down, all while ensuring availability in the event of failure or schema changes.

The startup promises auto-scaling, elastic-usage, high availability and multi-tenancy, while guaranteeing continuous service during schema changes, resource modifications and the scaling process. Xeround’s service currently has hundreds of paying customers.

Xeround, which competes with Salesforce’s Database.com, will use the funding to expand its cloud database solution as well as further marketing and sales operations.

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Cambridge, UK-based ip.access, which offers femtocell and picocell solutions to mobile operators worldwide, has raised $15 million in new funding from some of its previous investors.

The financing round comes from Intel Capital, Cisco, Qualcomm, Amadeus Capital Partners, Rothschild & Cie Gestion, Scottish Equity Partners and TE Connectivity.

ip.access CEO Simon Brown says the capital will be used for the development and deployment of coverage and network capacity-boosting small cell products as the global rollout of high-speed 3G and LTE networks continues. Says Brown:

“Everything we are doing and developing at the moment is geared towards making it easier and more cost effective for operators to add coverage and capacity to their networks where it is needed most – in homes, in offices and in busy public locations”.

Duly noted, and investors seem to like that pitch, too.

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Apple this morning announced that there are now over half a million applications available in the mobile applications-specific App Store, and that over 100 million of apps have been downloaded from the desktop software marketplace Mac App Store in less than a year after its debut.

When the Mac App Store opened for business on January 6, 2011, there were only 1,000 software applications available from the store. The company did not specify how many are available today, but says there are now “thousands” on the store’s landing page.

Ouriel Ohayon from Appsfire estimates there are currently about 10,000 live applications on the Mac App Store, to give you an idea of its current size.

How many of the 100 million downloads to date were paid vs. free apps remains anyone’s guess.

As for the App Store, Apple says more than 500,000 apps available, and that customers are ‘continuing’ to download more than 1 billion apps per month.

Press release:

CUPERTINO, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Apple® today announced that over 100 million apps have been downloaded from the Mac® App Store™ in less than one year. With thousands of free and paid apps, the Mac App Store brings the App Store experience to the Mac so you can find great new apps, buy them using your iTunes® account, and download and install them in just one step. Apple revolutionized the app industry with the App Store, which now has more than 500,000 apps and where customers have downloaded more than 18 billion apps and continue to download more than 1 billion apps per month.

“In just three years the App Store changed how people get mobile apps, and now the Mac App Store is changing the traditional PC software industry,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “With more than 100 million downloads in less than a year, the Mac App Store is the largest and fastest growing PC software store in the world.”

“With Autodesk products in both the App Store and Mac App Store, we can reach hundreds of millions of Apple users around the world,” said Amar Hanspal, senior vice president of Platform Solutions and Emerging Business at Autodesk. “With our free AutoCAD WS and the more powerful professional drafting tools of AutoCAD LT, we’re using the Mac App Store to deliver new products and reach a growing base of new Mac customers.”

“The Mac App Store has unparalleled reach and has completely transformed our distribution and development cycle,” said Saulius Dailide of the Pixelmator Team. “Offering Pixelmator 2.0 exclusively on the Mac App Store allows us to streamline updates to our image editing software and stay ahead of the competition.”

“In less than one year we’ve shifted the distribution of djay for Mac exclusively to the Mac App Store,” said Karim Morsy, CEO of algoriddim. “With just a few clicks, djay for Mac is available to customers in 123 countries worldwide. We could never have that reach through traditional channels.”

The Mac App Store offers thousands of apps in Education, Games, Graphics & Design, Lifestyle, Productivity, Utilities and other categories. Users can browse new and noteworthy apps, find out what’s hot, see staff favorites, search categories and look up top charts for paid and free apps, as well as user ratings and reviews. The Mac App Store is included with Mac OS® X Lion and is available as a software update for any Mac running Mac OS X Snow Leopard®. For more information visit, www.apple.com/mac/app-store.

Mac developers set the prices for their apps, keep 70 percent of the sales revenue, are not charged for free apps and do not have to pay hosting, marketing or credit card fees. To find out more about developing for the Mac App Store visit, developer.apple.com/programs/mac.

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