By Allan Maurer
UPDATED MCLEAN, VA—Trust Digital, a company selling software that helps manage mobile smartphones, has raised a $14.5 million C round from Summerhill Venture Partners, Fairhaven Captial, Core Capital Partners, Avansis Ventures, MMV Financial and Square 1 Bank.
The company, founded in May 2003 has raised a total of $31.5 million.
The company says the funding will extend Trust Digtial’s Enterprise mobile management support to include Research in Motion’s Blackberry devices and new consumer devices such as Apple iPhone and Google Android.
“We just added iPhone and will have capability in December, and for Blackberry in Q2 2009,”Dan Dearing, VP of marketing and product management, tells TechJournal South.
The 45-employee company also plans to expand direct sales channel partner support. Starting in 2009, it will add a few sales folks, Dearing says.
Joe Catalfamo, managing director at Summerhill Venture Partners said, “With the advent of blockbuster consumer devices like the iPhone, knowledge workers are rapidly going mobile with or without the help of their CIO. Trust Digital has figured out how to tap this huge market by giving CIOs a way to keep pace with smartphone technology, while also securing and managing their mobile workforce.
“We are bullish on this market and Trust Digital’s unique position in it.”
The company cites IDC estimates that 75 percent of the U.S. workforce will be mobile by the end of 2011, making mobility management and security increasingly important.
Most rely on consumer-oriented smartphones such as iPhone, which include both consumer and enterprise applications, creating security challenges for CIOs in government, healthcare and education.
Trust Digital says its enterprise mobility management platform secures and manages heterogeneous smartphone environments regardless of carrier or manufacturer, as opposed to Microsoft’s operating system specific solutions.
The company says its platform also helps CIOs control smartphone costs, which Gartner Group says is roughly ten times the cost of the device. Trust Digital’s centralized management simplifies how IT administrators and help desk specialists implement policies, assist users and enforce compliance for mobile applications, which it says eliminates some operational expense.
In addition, the company says its unique software-overlay architecture avoids datacenter expense by easily integrating with existing directory services, database resources and VPN infrastructure.
The company focuses on government organizations and Global 2000 companies.
On the Web: www.trustdigital.com
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