AppIQ's headcount is currently in the mid-50s, Lemont says. With the additional funding, he expects that to grow about 10 percent per quarter. Specifically, AppIQ plans to expand its direct sales force and increase its marketing activities. It's also increasing its "offshore development" activity with a team of software engineers based in Hyderabad, India. "We are expecting to get a multiplier on our engineering investment," Lemont says.
Before coming to AppIQ in December, Lemont was CEO of Revit Technology, a maker of building design software, which he sold to Autodesk Inc. in April 2002. Prior to that, he was COO of Concentra Corp., a customer relationship management (CRM) software company, which he took public in 1996 and which was subsequently bought by Oracle Corp. (Nasdaq: ORCL). Lemont has also held sales positions at Electronic Data Systems Corp. (EDS) and other technology companies (see AppIQ Names CEO).
Why are its VCs so hot on this Burlington, Mass., company? And what makes it different from the rest of the SRM field, which includes Astrum Software Corp., Fujitsu Software Technology Corp. (Softek), IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) (via its TrelliSoft acquisition), ProvisionSoft Inc., and TeraCloud Corp.? (See Astrum Catches 11 Sweet Ones, ProvisionSoft Founders Cut Loose, and IBM Snaps Up TrelliSoft.)
The way AppIQ explains things, it's in prime position to ride the storage industry's wave toward a common storage management standard. Its application-oriented SRM software is based on the Common Information Model (CIM), which serves as the foundation for the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA)'s Storage Management Interface Specifications (SMIS) (see AppIQ Has a Clue, The Common Code, and SNIA Puts the Pieces Together).
In fact, AppIQ claims it's quickly become the de facto supplier of CIM-based technologies to other storage vendors. Through its CIMIQ licensing program, AppIQ has already lined up Brocade Communications Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: BRCD), Hitachi Data Systems (HDS), LSI Logic Storage Systems Inc., Network Appliance Inc. (Nasdaq: NTAP), and Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW).
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