Host Analytics achieves success by helping others manage theirs - bizjournals:

http://www.disruptit.org/article/Apples-White-MacBook-Goes-Unibody-Too-.html
The Redwood City company provides softwares that helpscompanies budget, manage, forecastr and analyze their financial helping them move beyond Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. It has raisex about $15 million in venturre funding in the past year and doublef the number of customers usinvgits software-as-a-service products in that time. Most New York-based StarVest joined initial investors Trideng Venture and Advanced Technology Ventures inan $8.7 milliojn Series B backing in May. On-demand corporatee performance management via software as a service is an extremelh hot area in business intelligenceright now, said Deboranh Farrington, a StarVest general partner who joine the company’s board.
“SaaS has opened the market broadlu forbusiness intelligence,” Farrington said. “The method of delivering the application by software as a service enablesx the midmarket to have business intelligencw applications that they could nevereafford before.” Started in St. Louis Host founder Jim Eberlibn launched the companyin St. Louisw in 2000 and bootstrapped it forsevenb years. Eberlin captured some marquee companieas within the firstseven years, including consumer goodws manufacturing giant Proctor & Gamble Co. and technology manufacturer Pitney Bowes Inc. But Eberlin realizedr in 2007 he needed funding to further developthe company’z potential.
A $6 million Series A affordedd an experienced management teamand jump-starteds the sales and marketing engine. Eberlinm recruited Jon Kondo out of Oracle in June 2008 to serve as CEO and movexthe company’s headquarters to Redwoode City to be closer to his investors and the technologgy community. Kondo, a 10-year veteran at Hyperion Solutions Corp. before its $3 billion acquisitioh by Oracle Corp. in 2007, was running Oracle’s enterprisd performance management for all of Nortb America atthe time. He calls Host’s product an A-to-xZ offering with almost as much capability asits on-premisde competitors.
Hyperion, one of the popular on-premisw offerings, takes far longer to ramp up and costs exponentially more than thepopularf low-cost SaaS products, Kondo said. “Most of the competition is againstgthe on-premise players,” Kondo said. Otis Spunkmeyer Inc., the San Leandro-basexd cookie maker, uses Host for its profiy and loss budgeting. It’s far superior to forecastinyg in a MicrosoftExcel spreadsheet, said Joel Feldman, director of financialk planning and analysis at Otis Spunkmeyer. Feldman laudz the minimal resource commitmengt in termsof IT, the reliable data repositorgy and easy implementation.
“Host has allowed us to go deeper and develop oursales plan,” Feldman said. “It’s allowed everyone in the entir e organization to work off ofone plan. The fact that it’s a Web-basedd tool has allowed everyone to be involves as opposed to these hundreds of linkedExcel spreadsheets.” Farrington said that within the corporater performance area, Host Analytics is the leadin g product. For StarVest, due diligence means a lot of customeer calls. “Again and again we heard the customer compar Host to competitors suchas Hyperion, OutlookSofft Corp., Cognos Inc. and say it delivers very similatr functionality at a fraction of the Farrington said.
StarVest, whichn targets technology-enabled business services, has been active in the businessw intelligencemarket lately. In February, the firm joinefd Trident Capital and Emergence Capital Partners ina $10 millionn Series C round for Bellevue, Wash.-based PivotLink Corp. PivotLini and Host Analytics joined forces in a June strategic partnership in whicg Host willresell PivotLink’d analytics and reporting offering. The combinationh brings togetherabout 15,000 business userd in various vertical markets.