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In recent years, Microsoft, Facebook and Slack (and many more) have all built new productivity platforms for\u00a0workers to integrate and communicate about dozens of other API-enabled enterprise apps, but what about productivity tools for those\u00a0enterprises that have no appetite or budget to rip out and replace software that\u00a0they\u2019ve been using for years? Well, there\u2019s an app for that, too.<\/p>\n
Sapho<\/a>, which has developed\u00a0a platform that lets you build \u201cmicro apps\u201d for\u00a0older legacy software packages\u00a0(often without any APIs at all) to make them\u00a0more useful and used (\u201cas easy as using Facebook\u201d is the pitch from CEO and cofounder Fouad ElNaggar), has picked up\u00a0$14 million<\/a> in a Series B round of funding \u2014 raised as the startup continues to pick up speed\u00a0among enterprises using older software, growing revenues 320 percent and customers 200 percent in 2016.<\/p>\n Typical categories covered in Sapho\u2019s range include expense reporting, sales software, IT support tickets and HR tasks.<\/p>\n Sapho\u00a0added a Microsoft Teams integration earlier this month, and it also added an\u00a0integration with IBM Domino (the server side of the legacy service IBM Notes) this past February. It also integrates with software from Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle\u2019s EBS, Salesforce and SAP ERP.<\/p>\n That momentum has also meant that Sapho has been attracting MA attention: close sources tell us that both Microsoft and IBM are\u00a0among a group\u00a0who have talked to the startup about buying it outright as a route to offering micro apps building and administering services\u00a0to enterprises direct, rather than letting a third party do it for them.<\/p>\n Sapho\u2019s\u00a0valuation is not being disclosed, but ElNaggar\u00a0tells us that its increased nearly three-fold since its last round, a Series A of $9.5 million in June 2016, announced at the same time as Sapho launched out of closed beta. The company has raised $27 million to date and is not yet profitable, investing everything in growth at the moment, he added.<\/p>\n The rush of new cloud services from the likes of Amazon, Microsoft, Salesforce, Box and so many more has taken the IT industry by storm. Many small companies and some larger ones are jumping into the new wave of IT with both feet by buying into cloud-based products that can be used in the office, on the go on your phone and maybe even through\u00a0your watch or Echo speaker.<\/p>\n But that is not the whole story: there is a lot of legacy software still being used by large enterprises, and in many cases the cost of it has already been depreciated to zero, noted cofounder Peter Yared, making it a compelling concept for companies to figure out how to continue to use that rather than invest in something new.<\/p>\n \u201cIn\u00a0Silicon Vally people\u00a0love to talk about running Docker and\u00a0Kubernetes, and that is the future of the enterprise stack maybe 15 years from\u00a0<\/span>now, but the reality today is that we\u2019ve got security concerns and an IT\u00a0team that is not ready to make that migration,\u201d said\u00a0ElNaggar. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cT<\/span>he cost required to migrate is so abhorrent and risky that\u00a0if they can find a way to get more value out of systems tat have been depreciated to zero on balance sheet, if they have a way of triple productivity on an asset that is sitting with zero dollars on balance sheet, then that\u2019s what they will do. Plus, there\u2019s tens of billions in revenue still running on top of AS\/400s.\u201d (IBM\u2019s legacy system, first introduced in 1988<\/a>.)<\/p>\n There are other reasons why businesses might be reluctant to \u201crip and replace,\u201d for example in cases where\u00a0companies merge with each other and bring in their own legacy systems and large armies of employees that are already having to adjust to a range of other merger-related shifts.<\/p>\n Sapho may focus on ways to make legacy software more modern, but the product itself is a product very much of the new wave of IT applications and how they are priced on demand: it is $4 per active user per month, with a one-time connection fee \u201cto connect the gnarly older stuff\u201d in the words of Yared.<\/p>\n \u201cOur whole thesis behind pricing was that we hated getting burned for licensing for people who didn\u2019t use the software when we were back at CBS Interactive,\u201d he noted (both he and ElNaggar are\u00a0alums of the media company). \u201cO<\/span>ur thesis is to make 2,000 people more successful, and when we can build micro-applications for 2,000 people, then\u00a0they get addicted and use them.\u201d In that regard, Sapho is taking a route to revenues that is not unlike\u00a0Slack\u2019s. ElNaggar said that currently the utilization rate is over 90 percent for Sapho.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n This Series\u00a0B round was led by previous investor Caffeinated Capital, with participation also from new investor Felicis Ventures, along with other previous investors\u00a0Alsop Louie Partners, SoftTech VC, Morado Ventures, AME Cloud, and Bloomberg Beta.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI have seen Sapho\u2019s traction firsthand with Fortune 500 customers looking to modernize their existing systems and improve employee productivity,\u201d said Raymond Tonsing, founder and MD\u00a0of Caffeinated Capital, said in a statement. \u201cAs someone who is always on the lookout for transformational companies with exceptional founders and a world-class team, I believe Sapho is in the right spot to transform enterprise systems while also fundamentally improving how people work.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Tonsing was the first angel investor in Sapho and<\/span> also invests in Affirm, Docker, Color Genomics and many others. He also has an interesting\u00a0track record of\u00a0exits in developer-focused startups: he was also a backer of Parse (the developer platform sold to Facebook) and Appurify (an app testing platform sold to Google).<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunchIt\/~3\/DbY-Y5qGvw8\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In recent years, Microsoft, Facebook and Slack (and many more) have all built new productivity platforms for\u00a0workers to integrate and communicate about dozens of other API-enabled enterprise apps, but what <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-4847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-enterprise-software","tag-enterprise"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t