Vienna, Austria -- January 23 2017 Tricentis, raises $165 million from Insight Venture Partners to Deliver Continuous Testing at the Speed of DevOps.
A little-known Austrian software company is looking to snatch business from established players HP Enterprise (HPE) and IBM in the market for software testing tools, after raising $165 million from a U.S. private equity firm.
Tricentis, founded in Vienna in 2009 and now headquartered in the Silicon Valley town of Los Altos, has emerged as a leader in automating how big businesses test and deploy software, despite having raised little outside funding previously.
On Monday, the company said it will receive $165 million in financing from Insight Venture Partners, a software-focused private equity firm based in New York. Previously, Tricentis relied on "bootstrap" funding from its own operations and had taken only one outside financing round, a $9 million early-stage investment from Frankfurt-based venture firm Viewpoint, now part of Kennet Partners, in 2012.
As part its investment, Insight bought out Kennet's stake in Tricentis and is now its sole outside shareholder. Pacific Crest Securities acted as financial advisor to Tricentis, it said. The company, which counts 120 employees in Vienna, 25 in the United States and roughly another 120 employees around the world, is looking to use its new financial backing to dramatically boost its sales efforts in the U.S. market, where it employed just five sales people, CEO Sandeep Johri said.
"We can take Tricentis into becoming a global company," Johri told Reuters. "We have all the ingredients to really scale it."
The company currently counts more than 400 corporate and government customers concentrated in Central Europe, the United States, Australia and India. They include Allianz, BMW, Starbucks, Deutsche Bank, Orange, Toyota and UBS.
Tricentis ranks as the leader in software test automation by research firms Gartner and Forrester, a market where it has made inroads against established players HPE (HPE, +3.57%), IBM (IBM, +0.71%), and a variety of startups by taking a highly automated approach to testing in contrast to older script-based approaches of rivals, Johri said. Demand for Tricentis tools is being propelled by the wider shift to "agile" programming techniques where software developers at big companies rely on small, informal teams and rapid development cycles to deliver software more efficiently.
Broadly speaking, the global software testing market is estimated to generate $34 billion in 2017, according to market research firm Nelson Hall. Companies such as HPE and IBM hold big chunks of this market with software testing lines that boast broad product offerings, but also date back up to 20 years.By focusing on automating up to 90% of the work of software testing, Johri said Tricentis can take market share from more manual testing approaches of rivals, in what he says is a multi-billion-dollar slice of the software testing market.
About Tricentis
Tricentis, the Continuous Testing Company, specializes in agile market leading software testing tools for enterprises. We help Global 2000 companies adopt DevOps and gain success by achieving automation rates of over 90%. Our integrated software testing solution, Tosca Testsuite, consists of a unique Model-based Test Automation and Test Case Design approach, encompassing risk-based testing, test data management and provisioning, service virtualization, and more. We are established as a reliable enterprise partner, helping to deliver significant performance improvements to testing projects.
Prominent analysts have recognized us as a Leader in both Software Test Automation and in Functional Automation Tools, with Model-based Test Automation as our standout feature. Tricentis’ 400+ customers include global names from the Top 500 brands such as ExxonMobil, HBO, Whole Foods, Toyota, Allianz, BMW, Starbucks, Deutsche Bank, Lexmark, Orange, A&E, Vantiv, Vodafone, Telstra and UBS.
Tricentis has offices in Austria, Australia, Germany, India, Netherlands, Switzerland, Poland, United States and the UK.
About Insight Venture Parnters
Insight Venture Partners is a leading global venture capital and private equity firm investing in high-growth software, mobile and internet companies that are driving transformative change in their industries. Founded in 1995, Insight has raised more than $13 billion and invested in more than 250 companies worldwide. Our mission is to find, fund and work successfully with visionary executives providing them with practical, hands-on growth expertise to foster long-term success. For more information on Insight and all of its investments, visit http://www.insightpartners.com or follow us on Twitter: @insightpartners.
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