Proving yet again that the BYOD (bring your own device) trend is more than just a fad, Enterproid announced today that it has raised an additional $12 million in funding led by Google Ventures.
The startup’s product, Divide, gives you a secure environment on your iPhone and Android device for dealing with business data and apps. Enterproid also revealed today that it will now go under the “Divide” name (its original name was a somewhat confusing reference to its beginnings on Android).
Divide aims to please both IT managers and the employees under their purview, chief executive Andrew Toy tells me. That could be one of the big reasons why the company is seeing adoption from major companies like IBM, Verizon, and Vodafone. Divide’s cloud-based manager lets IT folks easily manage what their employees have access to, and it also works together with most major corporate security network solutions. For employees, Divide wants its product to be as easy to use as a typical consumer app.
“This market is definitely ready to move just beyond security,” Toy said. “We do great security, but we’ve always believed employees were going to have a voice too.”
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With the new funding, Toy tells me Divide is going to focus on “scaling everything” and landing new large customers. Divide is seeing 10x growth among paid corporate licenses, and its free app has been downloaded more than 200,000 times on iOS and Android.
The company originally launched Divide three years ago, when BlackBerry’s stranglehold on the enterprise was beginning to crumble. Now that BlackBerry’s business is practically on life support, there could be an even greater need for what Divide is offering.
“I think that the enterprises we’re seeing in the market at this point have decide we’re no longer relying on BlackBerry,” Toy said. “Whatever BlackBerry does will be interesting, but it’ll be no more interesting than what anyone else does at this point … Before it was kind of like a religion.”
Looking ahead, Toy says Divide is exploring how it can help people move beyond work email and document management, which is the most common usage of its platform right now. “With the 4G networks we have now, and the way our user experience works … I think it’s time we can redefine how people work in a very seamless and holistic way … So it’s unified communication,” he said.
New York City-based Divide has now raised a total of $25 million in funding so far. New investors Globespan Capital Partners and Harmony Partners also participated in this latest round, along with existing investors Comcast Ventures and Qualcomm Ventures.
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