Amazon Invests In Startup Acquia To Keep The Ball Rolling On Drupal In The Enterprise

Acquia, a startup that has built a business around the open source Drupal content management system, said Wednesday it received an undisclosed amount of funding from Amazon.com.

Acquia runs its entire infrastructure on Amazon Web Services. It sells a hosted Drupal platform to enterprises that features scalability as a key selling point. It also offers Drupal Gardens, a Drupal-as-a-service aimed at smaller businesses that's priced at $599 annually for unlimited bandwidth, storage and users.

Burlington, Mass.-based Acquia also provides enterprise-grade support and has built a large ecosystem of partners to help expand its market reach, John Locke, principal consultant at Seattle-based web development firm Freelock, told CRN. Freelock has a heavy Drupal focus.

"They're building a big partner ecosystem to bring Drupal into the enterprise," Locke said.

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Acquia also has close ties to Hollywood, with customers such as the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and the Screen Actors Guild.

Acquia's platform powered the Grammy.com website during the 56th annual Grammy Awards in January and will do the same for the Emmy Awards Aug. 25.

In addition to the Amazon investment, Acquia recently landed $50 million in funding led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA), with participation from Split Rock Partners, North Bridge Venture Partners, Sigma Partners, Investor Growth Capital and Tenaya Capital.

Acquia has raised $118.5 million since its founding in 2007.

Acquia said in a statement that it plans to use the Amazon funding to continue developing its personalization, commerce and big data marketing offerings running on its Drupal cloud.

Drupal is one of the biggest poster children for open source commercial success at the moment, and if that continues, Amazon will have another high-profile reference customer to go along with Netflix and others.

"We are pleased to help further the development of Acquia's digital engagement solutions," Jeff Blackburn, senior vice president of business development at Amazon.com, said in a statement.

PUBLISHED AUG. 13, 2014