Standing Cloud raises $3M to help new cloud providers stay competitive

Cloud application management provider Standing Cloud has raised $3 million in a new funding round, the company announced today.

Standing Cloud is a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) company that offers an application storefront and life-cycle management to cloud service providers. The service makes it possible to deploy, manage and monitor web applications like WordPress, SugarCRM, Bugzilla, ChimpExpress, Drupal, Joomla, TWiki and WebCollab.

“This is important because companies in the business of cloud infrastructure and hosting are rapidly moving to the infrastructure as a service space,” Standing Cloud CEO Dave Jilk told VentureBeat. “The bar has been set higher because of Amazon and its application layer. New cloud providers realize they need to be competitive and we’re helping them accomplish that.”

Standing Cloud’s catalog currently includes 100 open-source and commercial applications. The company’s service capabilities support several programming languages, including Ruby on Rails, PHP, Java and Python.

Along with the funding, Standing Cloud also announced that it has also added TechStars Boston mentor Will Herman to its board of directors. Herman previously served as CEO of Viewlogic Systems, Innoveda and Silerity.

“Standing Cloud is well-positioned to fill an essential and growing need in the cloud market,” Herman said in a statement. “Cloud service providers know that they need to offer an application layer for their customers, but have no effective way to build or maintain it. Standing Cloud delivers a solution to that problem today.”

Boulder, Colo.-based Standing Cloud was founded in 2009 and now has 19 employees. The new funding comes from existing investors Foundry Group and Avalon Ventures. Including today’s funding, the company has raised a total of $8 million.

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