'Enterprise software is sexy again'—Montréal's StatusNet raises new round worth more than $2 million

The Montréal-based open source microblogging service, StatusNet, has reeled in $2.3 million worth of investment, led by FirstMark Capital, which is based out of U.S. financial hub New York City. Other partners included in the round include BOLDstart Ventures, iNovia Capital, and Montreal Start Up.

"We're building an enterprise sales and support team to further push StatusNet software into the Global 1,000 market," says Evan Prodromou, Founder and CEO of StatusNet. "Our investors and partners have deep experience in enterprise and open source software that will help us during our next phase of growth."

"We see more and more companies using microblogging in the enterprise, and it is likely that social networking software will replace email as the primary interpersonal communications as it already did for about 20 percent of users in the consumer space," says Josko Bobjanovic of iNovia Capital. "The market opportunity for StatusNet couldn't be more clear."

"StatusNet shows the true power of open-source software in the enterprise," said Ed Sim, the managing partner of BOLDstart. "Large organizations love the flexibility of the product's plug-in architecture and client API. This investment will give additional resources to the company's recent development of dedicated desktop and mobile clients for StatusNet."

The deal has Box.net CEO Aaron Levie stating that "enterprise software is sexy again."