SpringSource Gets $15 Million in Series B Funding

SpringSource, a provider of Java infrastructure software and the overseer of infrastructure technologies from the Apache Software Foundation, has just received $15 million in Series B funding. The round of venture capital financing was led by Accel Partners, and Benchmark Capital, the lead investor in SpringSource’s first financing round, also chipped in. In January, SpringSource acquired enterprise open source player Covalent Technologies, which put Apache Tomcat application server and other open source applications under SpringSource's wing.

As CNet points out, SpringSource has an interesting mix of Apache-licensed applications that it gets revenues from.The SpringSource Enterprise Ready Server is an Apache Web and Tomcat application server found at many Fortune 500 companies. SpringSource Apache Enterprise Support is the company's enterprise support program for most popular Apache projects.

As we pointed out recently, despite naysayers, Apache appears to be hanging onto its dominance among web servers. The Apache Software Foundation applications also continue to do very well. Although the terms of SpringSource's deal to acquire Covalent were never officially announced, this eWeek story hypothesizes that the purchase price was well under $10 million, which I would agree with. With the Apache portfolio continuing to stay entrenched in enterprises, that looks like it was a smart buy.