CloudSwitch, Inc. announced that it has added John McEleney as its Chief Executive Officer and President and completed a second round of financing from top-tier venture capitalist firms. Led by Commonwealth Capital Ventures, the $8 million series B round includes initial investors Matrix Partners and Atlas Venture and brings the Company's total funding to more than $15 million.

CloudSwitch (www.cloudswitch.com) is developing an innovative software appliance that delivers the power of cloud computing seamlessly and securely so enterprises can dramatically reduce cost and improve responsiveness to the business. With CloudSwitch, enterprises are protected from the complexity, risks and potential lock-in of the cloud, turning cloud resources into a flexible, cost-effective extension of the corporate data center.

John McEleney joins the Company after a highly successful tenure at SolidWorks Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dassault Systems S.A. (NASDAQ: DASTY), where he served as Chief Executive Officer from 2001 to 2007, and as a Director since 2000. Under McEleney's leadership, SolidWorks grew to over 40,000 global customers, $350 million in revenues and a market valuation of $1.5 billion. McEleney joined SolidWorks in 1996, serving in several capacities including Chief Operating Officer and Vice President, Americas Sales. Prior to joining SolidWorks, McEleney held several key management positions at CAD software pioneer Computervision.

"Cloud computing is a major platform shift and the CloudSwitch approach is unique in addressing the needs of enterprise applications and environments," said John McEleney. "I'm excited to join this world-class team. The level of interest we're seeing from prospects, partners and investors is a reflection of the strength of our value proposition and the exponential growth of the cloud market."

The addition of John McEleney as Chief Executive Officer rounds out a strong existing management team, with seasoned executives from market-leading enterprise software and systems companies including BMC, EMC, Netezza, RSA, the security division of EMC, and Sun Microsystems. McEleney also joins CloudSwitch's board of directors, which includes David Skok of Matrix Partners, Axel Bichara of Atlas Venture, Elliot Katzman of Commonwealth Capital Ventures, Jit Saxena, Andy Palmer and Ellen Rubin.

"Having worked closely with John McEleney for many years, we are excited to back him and the CloudSwitch team," said Elliot Katzman, Commonwealth Capital Ventures. "We believe in partnering with entrepreneurs at the early stages of innovation, and saw the opportunity to accelerate the series B financing as a way to accelerate the growth of the company in this highly dynamic market."

Co-founded by Ellen Rubin and John Considine in 2008, CloudSwitch is built on the vision that cloud computing is a disruptive force that will dramatically improve the economics and flexibility of enterprise computing and reduce the dependency on ever-growing traditional, costly data centers. Rubin was an early member of the management team at Netezza Corporation (NYSE: NZ), the global market leader in data warehouse and analytic appliances. As Vice President of Marketing, Rubin helped build Netezza to over $125 million in revenue, 200 enterprise customers worldwide and a successful IPO in 2007. Considine was part of the early technology team at Pirus Networks, which was acquired by Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA) in 2002. From 2002 to 2008, Considine served as Director of Engineering for Sun's Platform Products Group.

"We are thrilled to add John's talent and leadership to the CloudSwitch team," said David Skok, Matrix Partners, and a member of the SolidWorks board of directors since 1994. "John has a proven track record in building early-stage technology companies into market leaders with impressive financial results. He created a vibrant customer-focused culture at SolidWorks that propelled the company to success, and we look forward to working with him and the team to build CloudSwitch into an equally dominant force in the enterprise cloud market."