Frank Artale Joins Ignition Ventures as Managing Director

BELLEVUE, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Ignition Venture Management today announced that Frank Artale has joined the firm as a general partner. Artale has played a leadership role in the development of numerous technology startups as an executive, investor and advisor. Artale brings more than 26 years of experience to Ignition with a deep expertise in cloud and virtualization software. At Ignition, Artale will focus on core infrastructure, networking and security investments for Ignition Venture Partners IV, a $400 million fund.

“Ignition is perfectly positioned to help our portfolio companies take advantage of the tremendous development talent in Seattle, and this will be a critical area for many companies as the innovation in cloud computing and virtualization continues to increase and accelerate”

A recognized software industry executive and investor with a strong understanding of the role engineering plays in building successful companies, Artale has been an entrepreneur and executive in several Ignition portfolio companies including CEO of Consera (sold to HP) as well as vice president of business development and strategic marketing at XenSource (acquired by Citrix Systems). Artale has also worked alongside Ignition as Chairman of the Board and director of Rendition Networks (sold to Opsware) and as an advisor to Zenprise.

“Frank possesses the rare combination of being a fantastic entrepreneur, investor, and operator. We have been fortunate to work with him in all of these capacities in the past and are thrilled to add him to our investment team,” said Cameron Myhrvold, managing director, Ignition Venture Management. “His experience investing in and building companies from the ground up also gives him a keen 360 degree view and understanding of what turns interesting technology into a successful business."

Artale was most recently group vice president of business development at Citrix Systems and a member of the venture development team at Accel Partners in Palo Alto, California. While at Accel, he became an advisor to such companies as Cloudera, an open source data platform, Membase, a noSQL solutions provider, and Centrify Software. Artale also held senior product management and sales roles at VERITAS Software and Microsoft before becoming an entrepreneur and start up executive.

Currently, Artale is the Chairman of the Board and a director at Open Kernel Labs, a mobile virtualization supplier and a director at DotNetNuke Corp., an open source content management platform.

“Ignition is perfectly positioned to help our portfolio companies take advantage of the tremendous development talent in Seattle, and this will be a critical area for many companies as the innovation in cloud computing and virtualization continues to increase and accelerate,” said Artale. “Ignition has a proven track record of making investments in high-growth potential, game-changing technologies, and I look forward to working with the team to identify new opportunities and support our current investments.”

About Ignition Venture Management

Ignition Venture Management, an early stage technology venture capital firm was founded in 2000 to invest in a range of start-ups in the software sector including infrastructure, consumer, SaaS business software and services and telecom. Ignition’s portfolio includes, Splunk, DocuSign, Cloudmark, SkyTap, StorSimple, BlueStacks, and Hipmunk Recent exits include Heroku, Global Scholar and ChinaCache (Nasdaq:CCIH) IPO. On October 1, 2007, Ignition announced its fourth early stage fund, Ignition Venture Partners IV, which closed at $400 million. The firm manages over $1 billion in committed venture capital. For more information, visit the Ignition website at www.ignitionpartners.com.