Netskope Raises $35 Million to Help Enterprises Put Shadow IT to Work

LOS ALTOS, Calif., May 15, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Netskope, the leader in cloud app analytics and policy enforcement, announced that it closed a $35 million Series C funding round led by Accel Partners. Existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners and The Social+Capital Partnership also participated in this round. Funds will be used to accelerate research and development, sales, support and marketing efforts to meet growing market demand for its solutions that help CIOs enable cloud app usage in a smart and economical way. Eric Wolford, Partner at Accel Partners, and well-respected industry and tech luminary who was most recently President of Riverbed Technologies, will join the Netskope Board. This latest investment brings Netskope's total funding to $56.4 million.

The most recent Netskope Cloud Report found that enterprises ran an average of 461 cloud apps during the first quarter of 2014, 85 percent of which were not enterprise-ready.

"As workers demand more effective tools to do their jobs, it's inevitable more cloud apps will be introduced to the enterprise without IT's knowledge," said Sanjay Beri, CEO and founder, Netskope. "Our vision is to help CIOs tackle the accelerating shadow IT conundrum with detailed real-time insights on how every cloud app is being used and enabling them to enforce well-informed granular policies that encourage smart cloud app usage, rather than simply blocking or allowing certain apps. Today's announcement validates that our approach is working and positions us well to meet the demands of CIOs looking for a better way forward with shadow IT."

This funding round comes on the heels of significant momentum for Netskope since its October 2013 launch. The company is now working with more than 100 companies from nearly every major industry, including healthcare, financial services, high tech and retail. Additionally, Netskope recently hired its one hundredth employee and has already garnered a number of industry awards, including CIO Magazine's "Top 10 Cloud Security Startups" and was recently recognized as a "Cool Vendor" by Gartner, Inc. The company also recently launched its Channel Partner Program and its signature Netskope Active Platform, the industry's only platform that provides context-aware cloud visibility, analytics, policy enforcement, data loss prevention (DLP) and anomaly detection in real-time for any sanctioned or unsanctioned cloud app, and whether accessed from a browser or a native mobile app. With the cloud access and security broker market poised to grow exponentially over the next year, Netskope expects to double its employee headcount and substantially expand its footprint in Europe by the end of 2014.

"Shadow IT is big and growing fast, with IT leaders discovering cloud usage 10 times greater than what they had thought or approved.  While a significant threat to the business, Shadow IT represents a huge opportunity to propel the business forward and to gain significant IT leverage.  Rather than clamping down, IT can embrace this trend by using Netskope to provide transparently the real time visibility, security and compliance requirements the business demands of all applications" said Eric Wolford, partner at Accel Partners. "Large customers told us repeatedly that Netskope is the leader in this fast growing market due to its ease of use and comprehensive and highly scalable approach. There's a tremendous market opportunity present as IT adapts to the cloud app economy, and Netskope is ideally positioned to seize it."

About Netskope

Netskope™ is the leader in cloud app analytics and policy enforcement. Only Netskope eliminates the catch-22 between being agile and being secure and compliant by providing complete visibility, enforcing sophisticated policies, and protecting data in cloud apps. The Netskope Active Platform™ performs deep analytics and lets decision-makers create policies in a few clicks that prevent the loss of sensitive data and optimize cloud app usage in real-time and at scale, whether IT manages the app or not. With Netskope, people get their favorite cloud apps and the business can move fast, with confidence.

Netskope is headquartered in Los Altos, California. Visit us at www.netskope.com and follow us on Twitter @Netskope.

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SOURCE Netskope