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Mobile security and enterprise mobility management (EMM) specialist AirWatch announced a $25 million investment by venture capital and growth equity firm Accel Partners.
AirWatch said the funding would help the company accelerate global growth, scale their research and development team and support the innovation and adoption of their content collaboration solution, Secure Content Locker (SCL), a platform that enables secure distribution and mobile access to documents.
With SCL, users can protect sensitive content in a corporate container, and secure distribution and mobile access. Administrators can ensure users always have the latest material at their disposal with updating and automatic file downloads. With SCL, users have anytime, anywhere access to Microsoft Office, iWorks, iBooks, ePub, images, video and audio files plus other types of files.
The AirWatch platform, which also offers mobile device management (MDM) and application management, can be used stand-alone for customized bring-your-won-device (BYOD) requirements or as a comprehensive, scalable enterprise-grade mobility platform. As businesses grapple with the implications of BYOD and the consumerization of IT, security concerns are among the top issues facing chief information officers (CIOs) and IT departments in organizations of all sizes.
“Accel Partners and Insight Venture Partners recognize the massive potential of this space, and we are excited to partner with the best growth investors from both coasts,” John Marshall, president and CEO of AirWatch, said in a statement. “Both firms have been collaborative, and we look forward to leveraging Insight’s resources and Accel’s network and expertise as our rapid growth presents new opportunities for the business.”
A company release said AirWatch currently secures more than 500 new clients per month, and counts among its customers Delta, Lowe’s, United Airlines, Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), Skanska, PepsiCo, Henry Ford Health System, Mount Sinai Medical Center, Best Buy and Abbott Laboratories.
AirWatch helps businesses mitigate risks that are presented when employee-owned devices are allowed access to corporate resources with customizable Terms of Use (TOU) agreements to inform users about the data that will be captured and what they are allowed to do with the device.
The company’s BYOD solution also require users to accept the TOU when they enroll a device and before accessing corporate applications. IT departments can assign and enforce agreements based on user role, organization group, ownership type and device platform. Administrators are able to update the agreement at any time, track the users who have agreed to the Terms of Use and generate reports on agreement compliance. The platform also supports multi-lingual agreements.
“We are proud to have partnered with both Insight Venture Partners and the best management team in mobile enterprise at AirWatch,” Ryan Sweeney, partner at Accel, said in a statement. “We believe that enterprise mobility currently represents the next big secular technological shift we will encounter, and AirWatch has emerged as the dominant company in this increasingly important category.”