ProfitBricks Secures $19.5M Investment to Accelerate Cloud Strategy

As ProfitBricks accelerates its pace in the cloud computing market, the Infrastructure- as -a -Service (IaaS) company has received a $19.5 million investment from its founders and United Internet (News - Alert) A, a European internet services provider.

The company plans to accelerate its cloud strategy and will use the new funds to drive the development of its virtual datacenter and adoption of its cloud infrastructure into new vertical markets, according to Achim Weiss, co-founder and CEO of ProfitBricks.

“ProfitBricks delivers on the promise of cloud computing that until its launch wasn’t realized,” Weiss said in a statement. “We spent two years building a cloud offering that is unmatched in the market. This latest investment represents an investment not only in ProfitBricks but in the future of cloud.”

Last year, the company established its U.S. headquarters in Cambridge, Mass. and launched its cloud 2.0 offering, including live vertical scaling and the industry’s first Data Center Design tool.

ProfitBricks is accelerating the definition of true cloud and offering some of the most advanced infrastructure today, according to Ralph Dommermuth, founder and CEO of United Internet AG.

“The founders have a vision to bring more speed and flexibility to the cloud. This investment will fuel that growth and provide a simple alternative that will attract more high-volume computing to the cloud,” Dommermuth said.

ProfitBricks used InfiniBand-based network technology to bring high performance computing capabilities to the cloud and offer a better price-performance ratio than the major cloud computing providers. ProfitBricks also introduced the first true minute-based billing to the cloud.

Founded in 2010, ProfitBricks had previously received $18.8 million from its founders and United Internet AG.

“In the six months since we launched our cloud offering ProfitBricks experienced tremendous growth,” said Bob Rizika, CEO of ProfitBricks USA. “We’re ready to aggressively push for greater market adoption and this investment represents the confidence in our continued success.”

Earlier this year, ProfitBricks launched a revamped referral program to make its referral partners more prompt to their acts of lead generation. Designed to offer 25 percent of a customer’s net revenue as compensation to the referral partners, the referral program is primarily aimed at the developers, IT consultants, system integrators and independent software vendors.

Under the program, referral partners who offer a sales lead referral before March 31, 2013 are offered 25 percent share of the revenue. For the partners joining the referral program between April 1 and June 30, the referral bonus will be 20 percent of net revenue.