emma, the first end-to-end, no-code multi-cloud management application platform, today announces that it has raised $6 million in Seed funding in a round led by RTP Global, with participation from AltaIR Capital and CircleRock Capital.

The investment will be used to develop the emma platform further and increase the size of emma’s team allowing it to serve customers on both sides of the Atlantic.

According to Gartner, 75% of midsize and large organisations have adopted a multi-cloud strategy as part of their digital transformation initiatives, with the typical company using two or more cloud providers. Private or public cloud environments - or a combination of both – offer a range of benefits, such as greater flexibility, higher availability, and minimal latency and load times. 

Organisations are moving towards multi-cloud operations to help them meet their business objectives due to its reliability and scalability, and to support their digital transformation efforts. But there are lots of complexities associated with managing multi-cloud, and operational risks can prevent organisations from realising the true benefits of multi-cloud environments.

A recent study from Forrester, which was commissioned by HashiCorp, cited that skills shortage was the most significant factor impacting multi-cloud operations. Supporting all major cloud providers, a low/no code application like the emma platform simplifies multi-cloud management, enabling enterprises to run multi-cloud environments effectively and cost-efficiently without the need for additional skilled professionals or coding.

Dmitry Panenkov, CEO and founder of emma, comments: “Unlike other multi-cloud management applications, emma provides a range of features including microservices, security, and network management in a single platform. And that’s not our only point of difference. For example, our recently released machine learning algorithm analyses the behaviour of a company’s workloads and applications, predicts future cloud spending, and recommends actions to reduce this. In fact, the average saving has risen from between 25 and 30 percent to 45 percent since its launch.

“What’s more,” he continues, “when companies build their own network over the internet, providers will charge for incoming and outgoing traffic, for the gateways deployed on the edge of every cloud provider, and for the routers needed to host their data. But with emma’s own multi-cloud networking backbone – the network that physically connects different cloud providers – companies can save three times more than using their own or a provider’s network.”

Since its launch in November 2021, emma has doubled the size of its team to 40, most recently the addition of Dirk Alshuth, CMO, who joins from UiPath, and Garegin Margaryan as Head of Engineering, who was previously the VP of Software Development at INNOVA.

The company will use the funding to grow its engineering team and speed up its development pipeline. It plans to launch several new automation-related features this year, including infrastructure as code, agnostic transfers and autoscaling for managed services across different cloud service providers. emma is also planning to improve the existing native connectors to its customers’ private clouds, allowing them to seamlessly scale workloads from private to public clouds, and avoid overheads in their hardware environments.

Another key focus for 2023 is the company’s expansion into the US. Panenkov explains: “Companies in the US are struggling to manage their cloud environments, with many using six or seven tools to manage just two cloud providers. And we can help them streamline this down to just one application. We’ll be expanding our team in the States over the coming months as we look to scale across the country.”

Jelmer de Jong, Partner at RTP Global, says: "Most businesses today are turning to multi-cloud to optimise performance and reduce the risk of service disruption. But it's not without its complications. Cloud is rapidly becoming one of the highest spend categories for most companies, especially when you consider the number of different tools required to manage multi-cloud deployments. And there is typically little room to negotiate or reduce those costs. emma gives the power back to the buyer by increasing platform independence, reducing vendor lock-in, and achieving significant cost saving for its customers. We were so impressed by what Dmitry and his team have already achieved and we look forward to partnering with them on their journey to help more companies enjoy the benefits of multi-cloud, without the complexity."