CRN Exclusive: ERP Security Startup Onapsis Plans To Double Down On The Channel With $31 Million Round

Onapsis, a Boston-based enterprise cybersecurity startup, said Friday that the company has raised a $31 million financing round that will be used in part to expand its channel partner program.

Founded in 2009, the company provides automated threat monitoring and protection for SAP and Oracle enterprise applications to more than 200 customers, many of which the company said belong in the Global 2000.

The company's largest round yet, which was announced Friday and brings total funding to $62 million, comes after experiencing record annual growth for five consecutive years, allowing it to make Deloitte's Fast 500 list of fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. last year.

Mariano Nunez, CEO and co-founder of Onapsis, told CRN exclusively that after two years of working with channel partners and seeing multiple seven-figure deals come through, the company plans to double down on its channel program. The channel currently represents 20 percent of annual revenue, Nunez said, which he hopes will grow to 30 percent to 35 percent in the next 12 months.

Nunez declined to disclose annual revenue.

"We know this is a great opportunity to any VAR to provide a very differentiated offering to their customers, a solution for a very critical problem," said Nunez, who added that enterprise resource planning (ERP) software has historically been vulnerable to cyberattacks.

The company's channel partners include consulting and audit firms like Accenture and PwC, as well as value-added resellers like Optiv and Agentil.

As part of its plan to expand its channel program, Nunez said the company will hire a vice president of strategic alliances who will work closely with partners.

Onapsis provides a variety of resources for partners, Nunez said, including sales enablement and certification for the company's products, which will be expanded with the new round of funding. Selena Proctor, vice president of marketing at Onapsis, said the company also engages partners for joint marketing efforts and that she will expand her team for increased interaction with partners.

Nunez said part of what helped Onapsis with early traction in the channel was a 2017 Gartner report that recognized the company as a sample vendor for the emerging category of business-critical application security.

"By definition, business-critical application security applies to applications critical to the functioning of the business. Downtime of the core ERP system of an enterprise can be catastrophic," Gartner analyst Neil MacDonald wrote in the report. "Outages and theft caused by hackers should be viewed as critical as downtime caused by hardware or software failures.’

Now that Onapsis has seen enough big deals coming through the channel, Nunez said, the company is going to pursue partners more than it has ever before.

"We know there is a repeatability," he said.

The company's lead investor for this round was private equity firm LLR Partners. The other investors in the new round included .406 Ventures, Evolution Equity Partners and Arsenal Venture Partners. As part of the funding, David Stienes, partner at LLR, joined the company's board.