Capriza, your ticket to mobilizing desktop business apps, raises $27M

Apparently it pays to provide tools to simplify enterprise software for mobile consumption.

That’s how things look today, with startup Capriza announcing a $27 million funding round.

The startup sells a cloud service that people can use to create mobile versions of complex enterprise applications from vendors like Oracle, SAP, and Salesforce.com. Capriza eliminates the need to mess with new code, data-integration tools, or application programming-interfaces (APIs). The mobile applications, running in HTML5, can work on any type of mobile device.

Now Capriza can spend money to bring in more business while continuing to improve the use of back-end applications on any device, said Ty Lim, the startup’s vice president of marketing. The funding also comes just as competition is intensifying.

“The Salesforces, the Workdays, the SAPs, the Oracles — they’re all rushing to deliver on a cohesive mobility strategy and deliver on that application experience,” Lim said.

There’s also competition from IBM Worklight, MoNimbus, PowWow, and SkyGiraffe, not to mention efforts by companies to try on their own to make desktop apps mobile-friendly.

Tenaya Capital led the new round. Andreessen Horowitz, Charles River Ventures, Harmony Ventures, and Allen and Co. also participated. To date, the startup has raised $50.5 million.

Capriza has racked up nearly 100 customers, Lim said, including Dell, DirecTV, Paramount, VMware, and the city of Los Angeles.

Palo Alto, Calif.-based Capriza started in 2011 and employs 75 people. Plans call for that figure to double within a year, Lim said.