Qubell (www.qubell.com), an innovator in automated application deployment and configuration management for web-scale applications, today announced $1.8 million financing from two top Silicon Valley venture capital firms specializing in enterprise software: Benhamou Global Ventures (BGV) and Icon Venture Partners. The capital will be used primarily to establish sales and marketing operations and develop vertical solutions such as e-retail, where the company has established strong initial demand.

Qubell's mission is to address the need of today's enterprises to win in rapidly changing markets by putting out new features into production continuously, up to multiple times a day. Speed of release to production and change management are widely considered the key obstacles to business impact for online enterprises.

Qubell technology leverages the cloud to effectively create a 'conveyor belt' that carries changes to code, configuration or middleware through all stages of the release pipeline, up to and including production upgrade, continuously and automatically.

To achieve this level of automation, the Qubell platform gives the developers a 'button' to launch lightweight 'sandboxes' configured with all the necessary infrastructures, applications, tests, datasets and tools for application deployment and management. More sophisticated multi-node sandboxes for regression, performance, integration and user acceptance testing easily integrate with build servers and continuous integration (CI) tools to achieve a fully automated agile software factory.

Qubell was founded by Victoria Livschitz and Stan Klimoff, who have been working together on similar technologies at Grid Dynamics, a pioneer and leading provider of custom continuous delivery solutions to online retailers. Grid Dynamics was founded by Livschitz in 2006.

'We are very excited to bring on board such experienced investors who understand our space and stage of growth. It's an important validation of our vision and execution of that vision,' said Victoria Livschitz, CEO of Qubell. 'Icon Venture Partners, represented by Charles Beeler, has a strong partner network and history of successful investments in similar enterprise technology companies. BGV, and its founder Eric Benhamou in particular, bring tremendous experience of growing large companies, combined with a focus on the enterprise application market.'

Qubell Gaining Traction with Enterprise Customers

Since emerging from stealth in June 2013 and announcing the active use of its platform by one of the world's largest retailers (see customer press release here), Qubell has deployed its SaaS platform at multiple customers, including marquee accounts. Online enterprises are responding to the promise of going from a precious few production releases per year to 30 or 300.

'Qubell has all the hallmarks of the other breakthrough teams and companies I've worked with over my career,' said Eric Benhamou, chairman of BGV. 'Qubell's relentless customer focus and deep technology development skills are a potent combination.'

'Our past experience in this area enabled us to quickly see the impact potential of Qubell's technology,' said Charles Beeler, general partner of Icon Venture Partners. 'Every enterprise cares about responding quickly to market demands, and that's what Qubell enables for online enterprises.'

About the Investors

Benhamou Global Ventures (BGV, http://benhamouglobalventures.com/) is an early-stage venture capital firm with deep Silicon Valley roots, focusing on enterprise information technology global markets. BGV Chairman Eric Benhamou is renowned as both an investor and entrepreneur. Formerly chairman and CEO of 3Com, co-founder of Bridge Communications and chairman of President Bill Clinton's council for Information Technology, he created BGV in 2003 to help other entrepreneurs to build or run a new generation of high-technology companies.

Icon Venture Partners (http://iconvp.com/) invests in high-growth enterprise technology companies, with a focus on emerging technology markets including big data, cloud technologies and infrastructure software. General Partner Charles Beeler, who co-founded Icon Venture Partners in 2012, has been a venture capitalist for more than 15 years, focusing on early-stage enterprise technology companies. The Icon team has already nurtured other companies in enterprise IT markets to highly successful investment outcomes.

About Qubell

Qubell, an innovator in automated application deployment and configuration management for web-scale applications, addresses a primary challenge in online businesses today: how to reduce cycle times and continuously deliver new applications and features without jeopardizing control, reliability or uptime. The Qubell platform brings true agility to online enterprises by transforming how they create, deploy and run applications. Founded by pioneers in enterprise cloud applications and services, Qubell has its headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. For more information, visit qubell.com.