RightScale, Aster Data raise millions in funding

Today, two already well-funded companies announced new rounds of financing to support the growth of their businesses.

Cloud management platform RightScale raised $25 million in a C round of financing, bringing total funds raised to $47 million, while big data and analytics provider Aster Data raised $30 million in its C round, bringing its total funding to $53 million.

Management and tooling for cloud applications is again looking to be the "killer app" for the cloud and the more control that tools like RightScale give to users, the more adoption they see. Similarly, as the necessity for data analytics continues to grow, Aster Data is well positioned to make life easier for businesses trying to process huge amounts of information.

These are significant amounts of money and it makes me wonder why these businesses require so much capital, though both companies claim they raised the money at favorable terms in order to capitalize on the market growth.

And both markets--cloud management and data analytics--are undoubtedly growing. Aster Data claims sales have doubled every year since launch and RightScale claims a 1,000 percent increase in cloud spending.

Data analytics companies have become the latest target for acquisition by very large vendors, with IBM acquiring Netezza earlier this week and EMC acquiring Greenplum back in July.

RightScale is well positioned to take advantage of the rise of Amazon Web Services as a substitute for on-site software, and should be able to ride AWS' coattails to success, though it's far less obvious a candidate for acquisition than Aster Data.

Regardless, it's good to see investors excited about the space, though it would be nice to see more new companies being funded and growing the ecosystem.

Correction, 3 p.m. PDT: This post was updated to correct the figure for the total funds raised. It was $47 million.