Tribold has announced a syndicated $15 million Series B funding round with new investors Esprit Capital Partners and existing investors Eden Ventures. As part of the investment, Esprit Partner Nic Brisbourne will be joining the Tribold board.

This investment represents a key milestone in the growth and development of the company and secures another blue chip partnership for Tribold. It delivers the catalyst for Tribold to fulfil expansion of its customer-facing sales and support activities and further develop the level of maturity in its industry leading suite of Product Management application software for Communication Service Providers (CSPs). This step will progress Tribold’s international expansion plans and add yet more experience and expertise to Tribold’s board.

Tribold is tackling one of the biggest challenges facing CSPs in the 21st Century – effectively managing products and services across their growing portfolios. Through its suite of Product Management application software, Tribold automates what is today a manual and disjointed process, by consolidating product information into a single, unified Product Catalog. Centralizing product data will provide the catalyst to rapidly deliver new product bundles to market in the most efficient and profitable way.

“Securing this level of investment marks the start of another exciting chapter in the company’s history and will allow us to build on and further increase the momentum we have built up in the market. We are entering an important phase in our business development and I am delighted to have such strong and experienced financial partners,” said Simon Muderack, CEO at Tribold. “Esprit represents another critical blue chip partnership for us, complementing our existing VC, Eden Ventures, who have already added considerable experience and momentum to the business and will continue to do so going forward. Furthermore, Nic joining the already experienced board will add his extensive wealth of expertise and business acumen.”

With the race on to own the ‘converged customer’ across the CSP market, subscriber retention is a priority. CSPs increasingly find themselves having to go-to-market with new and enhanced products and services quicker if they are to retain customers and not lose competitive advantage. By providing CSPs with a single view of all products and services offered, Tribold enables them to understand key product management metrics, such as profitability and predictive analysis, based on accurate information. In today’s converged world, the ability to rapidly adapt to changing trends in customer demands has a direct affect on the provider’s bottom line.

“Tribold is an exciting new communications industry software applications company, with a rapidly growing portfolio of telecoms customers. What is more, the market is still in its embryonic stages and we see this as an excellent opportunity to achieve a dominant share of this emerging sector,” said Nic Brisbourne, Partner at Esprit Capital Partners. “We were also attracted by the experience of Tribold’s excellent board, especially the pedigree of the CEO, Simon Muderack and CTO, Catherine Michel. We believe the success of our investment is assured.”

Evidence of the healthy nature of Tribold’s marketing can be seen according to a forthcoming Yankee Group report, which states that the typical CSP has upwards of 1000 unique products, and can take up to a year to introduce new products. As we move towards a fully converged environment, this number is set to rise dramatically – further exacerbating the already significant product management challenges.

Both Esprit and Eden Ventures were victorious in last week’s CNet UK Technology Innovation & Growth Awards, picking up awards for the ‘Venture Capitalist of the Year’ and ‘Early Stage Investor of the Year’ respectively. More information at: http://etf.cnetnetworks.co.uk/ig07/awards-categories.htm.

About Tribold
Tribold is the world’s leading provider of Product Management enterprise software specifically developed for Communication Service Providers (CSPs). The Tribold Product Portfolio Managerâ„¢ (TPPM) is a single, integrated suite of enterprise product management applications that empower CSPs to put products at the heart of their business. Tribold PPM is based on a Unified Product Catalog and includes Product Data Management (PDM), Product Data Integration (PDI), Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), Product Business Intelligence (PBI), and Product Channel Management (PCM) applications.

Dramatic improvements in product management performance enable CSPs to drive increased profit from their products by taking products and services to market faster, improving customer service through self-selection and enhancing operational efficiency.

Headquartered in London, and with offices in North America and Asia, Tribold was founded in 2003 and is privately held. For more information visit www.tribold.com.

About Esprit Capital Partners
Esprit Capital Partners (“Esprit”) is the new independent venture capital fund manager created by the merger of the Prelude Ventures and Cazenove Private Equity teams in June 2006. The combined team has invested in many of Europe’s most successful venture exits of recent years, including the sales of KVS to Veritas, Alphamosaic to Broadcom, FillFactory to Cypress Semiconductor and DNA Research Innovations to Invitrogen. Esprit has US$500 million of assets under management (including Prelude Trust plc and the Esprit Capital I fund) and has offices in London and Cambridge, UK. For further information, please visit www.espritcp.com.

About Eden Ventures
Eden Ventures focuses entirely on early stage UK and Ireland software opportunities in the telecommunications, digital media and enterprise sectors. As serial entrepreneurs, Eden’s partners bring the highest levels of expertise in building early stage technology companies. As seasoned investors, Eden’s partners bring a strong investment track record in this exciting sector. Eden adds significant sales & marketing, organizational and financial focus and capabilities to the existing technology value of its portfolio members.