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Press Release
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iRise Secures $15.8 Million Late Stage Funding From Morgan Stanley Venture Partners and Private Investors
Capital To Accelerate Market Leadership With Application Simulation – The Solution To The “Unsolvable” Application Definition Problem That Costs U.S. Businesses $30B Every Year
EL SEGUNDO, Calif. –— January 19, 2005 —iRise®, the world’s leading application definition software and services company, today announced the securing of $15.8 million in late stage funding led by Morgan Stanley Venture Partners (MSVP). Since 2001, iRise has raised over $28 million from a broad range of private investors and now MSVP, the first institutional investor to become involved with the company. With over 40 product customers and the company’s application simulator platform in its fourth generation, iRise intends to use the capital to accelerate market leadership in the fast growing application definition space by expanding sales, marketing, business development and product efforts.
“The communication gap between business and IT has been a well known and fundamental problem associated with custom software development," stated Peter Chung, executive director at MSVP and newly appointed member of the iRise board of directors. "Morgan Stanley Venture Partners is excited to help iRise fix an endemic problem that affects every Fortune 500 company and that has long been believed to be unsolvable. iRise brings the business and IT organizations together in a truly new, unique and intuitive way – driving growth, cutting costs and giving everyone a common language with which to innovate." Because of its unique software solution, iRise was selected as one of the top private companies from a pool of several hundred nominated to take part in Morgan Stanley's latest Annual West Coast CTO Summit.
“iRise has the most compelling business proposition I’ve seen in years,” stated Dean Witter III, a private investor in iRise. “iRise has built market momentum with a platform that delivers a compelling ROI. With this new infusion of capital, iRise can now build on the solid foundation it has established and continue to scale their organization and operations aggressively.”
The iRise application simulation product is the world’s first enterprise software platform that eliminates up to 80% of rework costs on custom-built application projects. According to Forrester Research, over $100 billion will be spent this year on such projects. Poorly defined applications have led to a persistent miscommunication between business and IT that largely contributes to a 66% project failure rate for these applications, costing U.S. businesses at least $30B every year. This communication gap has long believed to be an “unsolvable” problem that large corporations had to live with – until now.
"We expect the application definition space to evolve and grow rapidly through 2009," said Matt Light, Research Director with Gartner Inc., the world's leading IT research advisory firm. "Innovators in this space have developed and enhanced their products over the last few years, targeting business analysts with application simulation that will become almost a must for large, Web-based development projects."
Like many other industries have already discovered, text is a very poor way to define complex systems. Today’s complex business applications are no different. Unlike traditional text-based methods of requirements gathering, the iRise application simulation platform enables businesses to quickly visualize, simulate and "test market" applications prior to expensive coding efforts. For the first time, business analysts, IT managers and systems integrators can validate application requirements directly with stakeholders as early as the proposal process. The iRise simulation helps solidify specifications during interactive review sessions and the visually accurate, functionally rich simulation behaves like the final coded application - acting as a stable blueprint for the implementation team. The benefits of using iRise are enormous:
- Project rework costs are virtually eliminated – saving up to 30% of overall development costs
- Downstream organizations get involved early, thereby ensuring that applications are delivered on time
- Visual simulations drive compelling applications that users actually want to use
- Business people can now use visual simulations to drive innovation and new project funding
“iRise is bringing a truly disruptive technology to bear on a very old and very expensive problem facing global businesses,” said Emmet B. Keeffe III, chief executive officer and co-founder of iRise. “Forward thinking organizations are now realizing that millions of dollars of waste can now be easily and quickly avoided – creating tremendous opportunities for competitive advantage for first movers.”
About iRise
iRise® is dedicated to bridging the communication gap between business and IT by improving the process of defining business applications. Focused on Fortune 1000 companies, its innovative iRise application simulator enterprise software platform recently received eWEEK magazine's Analyst's Choice award. It allows an organization to "test market" applications with customers, partners and employees before making funding decisions and validate business requirements with stakeholders during the definition process. iRise ensures business applications actually meet the needs of the business. With the same focus, its services group has successfully translated the needs of business users to deliver mission-critical business applications for more than 100 clients on 300 engagements. The company is based in El Segundo, Calif., with regional offices in New York and San Francisco, and sales offices covering the continental US.
About Morgan Stanley Venture Partners
Morgan Stanley Venture Partners is the venture capital affiliate of Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MWD), a preeminent global financial services firm. Since its inception in 1985, MSVP has invested over $1.2 billion in more than 140 companies. MSVP manages a group of funds that invest in high-growth companies within the information technology and healthcare industries, primarily in the United States. MSVP also sponsors and participates in growth buyouts and other structured transactions in its targeted industry segments. For more information, visit www.msvp.com.
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