2nd Watch Names New CEO, Nets $10 Million Series C1 Financing to Extend Leadership Position in Enterprise Cloud Management Market

SEATTLE, WA--(Marketwired - Oct 14, 2014) - 2nd Watch has raised an additional $10 million in venture funding, extending a Series C round initiated in November 2013. The new funds will be used to expand the company's sales, marketing and product development efforts, and to reach new geographic markets. The company also announced the appointment of enterprise technology veteran, Doug Schneider, to CEO. Schneider will lead 2nd Watch as the company expands its footprint as a top AWS partner helping large organizations manage mission-critical apps, computing and data in the cloud. Top Tier Capital Partners led the new investment, with participation from existing investors, Madrona Venture Group and Columbia Capital.

Schneider takes over for founder Kris Bliesner, who will continue to lead the technical direction of the company as CTO. Schneider has a 20-year record of building and scaling fast-paced technology and enterprise cloud companies. Prior to 2nd Watch Schneider was a president at Verio, where he helped take the company public before selling to NTT Communications for over $5 billion. Most recently Schneider was EVP and GM at Melbourne IT, a publicly held Australian web hosting company. He's also been CEO at AllCall (sold to Nextel), Colorado Internet Services (acquired by Verio), Genea and Transaction Wireless.

2nd Watch is one of a handful of companies in the world with AWS Premier Partner status and the only cloud-native partner with a proven platform for managing AWS infrastructure for the enterprise. The firm, which has now raised over $37 million in venture capital since 2010, completed a record quarter on September 30, increasing bookings more than 600% over Q3'13. New enterprise clients include Amplify and Diane von Furstenberg. The firm expects to manage 10% of all AWS infrastructure consumed worldwide within a few years.

"I am incredibly excited to welcome Doug to 2nd Watch," says Bliesner. "He's a skilled leader with considerable business-building acumen who has founded, guided and grown several successful enterprise companies over the past two decades. 2nd Watch and its customers are in great hands with Doug at the helm." 

"With respect to our investment, we are very motivated to support 2nd Watch," says David York, CEO and managing director at Top Tier Capital Partners. "Through numerous high-profile engagements, 2nd Watch has demonstrated a unique ability to manage large cloud infrastructure deployments. We think they are in a strong position to become the next great IT management success story."

"Large companies moving beyond initial cloud infrastructure deployments to far more sizable commitments need partners with experience in strategically approaching the shift and then managing these projects," says new 2nd Watch CEO Schneider. "Over and over again 2nd Watch has demonstrated the ability to help the biggest brands in the world transition to the cloud and manage their enterprise-level cloud needs. I am thrilled to be joining 2nd Watch and excited to work with clients in optimizing their cloud infrastructure investments so they can run their businesses even better." 

About 2nd Watch
2nd Watch is a global leader in building, deploying and managing Amazon Web Services (AWS) based IT operations for enterprise customers. 2nd Watch assists customers in evaluating the economics of moving IT operations into AWS, designs and builds highly reliable and scalable AWS based enterprise IT platforms, and provides software tools and management services that enable enterprises to deploy, manage and optimize cloud based IT operations infrastructure. 2nd Watch has effectively moved over 2MW of enterprise data center capacity into the AWS cloud as part of 300+ platform and data center migrations. 2nd Watch is an AWS Premier Consulting Partner and is headquartered in Liberty Lake, WA with offices in Seattle, San Francisco, and New York. For more information, try the TCO Calculator at tco.2ndwatch.com, email info@2ndwatch.com, visit www.2ndwatch.com or call 1-888-317-7920.