Stuart Mill Venture Partners, L.P. today announced the closing of the first tranche of a Series C investment in Appistry, Inc., a St. Louis, Missouri provider of a highly scalable and reliable grid-based application software platform.  Stuart Mill Venture Partners managing director Larry Hough also joins the Appistry board of directors.

Proceeds from this round will be used to finance an expansion of sales, marketing and product development in support of the company’s leading grid-based application platform product, Appistry Enterprise Application Fabric (EAF). Appistry EAF dramatically simplifies the development, deployment and management of highly scalable and reliable software applications for extreme transaction processing (XTP), software-as-a-service (SaaS), cloud computing, and other data and CPU-intensive applications while substantially reducing data center energy consumption.

“This financing allows us to capitalize on the success of our recently announced Open Distribution Initiative and the tremendous response to our new Community Edition product, which is available to any developer or architect for free download,” said Kevin Haar, Appistry chief executive officer. “Moreover, the deep experience Larry Hough brings to our board in the financial services and transportation sectors will be invaluable as we continue to grow our business.”

“A challenge I’ve seen repeatedly in my career is the difficulty of creating highly-scalable software applications for processing large volumes of information or serving Internet-scale user communities,” said Hough. “Appistry’s products solve this increasingly pervasive problem, enabling enterprises to more easily build and manage large-scale, mission-critical software applications. The company has demonstrated remarkable vision and execution to date, and we’re excited to help it achieve its next level of growth.”

For more information contact Stuart Mill Venture Partners from this site or see www.appistry.com.

Stuart Mill Venture Partners, L.P. today announced the closing of the first tranche of a $2.5-million Series C round in support of Environmental Operating Solutions, Inc. (EOS), an environmental technology company that develops and markets green products specifically engineered for water purification. EOS is located in Bourne, Massachusetts and has manufacturing and distribution facilities in Boston and Baltimore.

The company will use the initial investment proceeds to expand the manufacturing and distribution capabilities for its proprietary line of liquid carbon products that remove nitrogen from wastewater. The second tranche, expected to close within 90 days, will allow EOS to broaden its denitrification technical capabilities to support research and product development.

“In an effort to meet regulatory requirements, many methanol-based wastewater treatment plants are challenged with ensuring safety while controlling operational costs,” said Larry Hough, general partner of Stuart Mill Venture Partners. “EOS has a proprietary, environmentally sound carbon source product set that allows treatment plants to avoid costly site upgrades and ensure the safety of personnel. This is exactly the type of firm that meets the cleantech profile of our fund, and we are pleased to be able to help EOS expand its operations.”

“The Chesapeake Bay and coastal areas from Long Island Sound to Florida are strongly focused on nitrogen removal by local wastewater treatment facilities”, added Eric Stoermer, CEO and President of EOS. “With the investment from the Stuart Mill Venture Partners fund, we will expand our network that supplies our safe, green nitrogen removal products not only in these areas, but at sites nationally and worldwide.”

For more information contact Stuart Mill Venture Partners from this site or see www.eosenvironmental.com.

Stuart Mill Venture Partners, L.P. today announced its first investment, leading a $3.5-million Series B round in support of Sypherlink, Inc., a Dublin, Ohio software company with significant traction in the federal sector as a data-sharing facilitator.

Other investors included Battelle Ventures, Reservoir Venture Partners, Innovation Valley Partners and an A round angel. In 2005, Battelle Ventures led a $3.5-million Series A round in which Reservoir Venture Partners participated.

“We are attracted to Sypherlink for its growth potential,” said Larry Hough, general partner of Stuart Mill Venture Partners, who joined the Sypherlink board. “We were immediately impressed with the company’s value proposition – particularly right now in the government sector,” continued Hough. “There is an urgent need and pent-up demand for faster, cost-cutting solutions to facilitate cross-agency and cross-jurisdictional data sharing and intelligence efforts,” he said, “and we believe that the company will soon reach a new market level even as it continues to innovate.”

“The funding will be used primarily to expand Sypherlink’s market presence and customer base within two core markets – government agencies that support integrated criminal justice and national security, and the global 1000 commercial business sector,” said Sypherlink CEO James Paat.

For more information contact Stuart Mill Venture Partners from this site or see www.sypherlink.com. See also the .pdf version of the Battelle Ventures news release.

Stuart Mill Venture Partners, L.P. today announced the recent formation of its $20 million venture fund, focused on clean technology and government sector services. Managed by Stuart Mill Capital, Inc., the fund is led by its General Partner, Lawrence Hough, former CEO of Sallie Mae, SatoTravel and Synxis Corporation. “We are pleased to build on past relationships with investors to enter a robust growth sector with a proven team of executives”, said Hough.