VCs throwing gobs of money at cloud, security, mobile startups

Tech startups focused in hot areas such as virtualization, mobility and security have pulled in tens of millions of dollars over the past week or so from venture capitalists looking to back the next big thing.

Not surprisingly, most of the companies have cloud-based offerings. IDC has said recently that worldwide spending on cloud  services will surpass $47 billion worldwide this year, with that number expected to more than double by 2017.

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Here's a quick rundown of some fresh rounds of funding received by networking startups:

*Security company CrowdStrike, which in June rolled out its first product, this week announced it has landed a $30 million B round of funding led by Accel Partners.  The company's first offering, dubbed Falcon, is aimed at protecting Windows and Mac users from advanced persistent threats via sensor-based technology. It plans to use its new funds, "to further drive innovation in big data analytics and security intelligence and support an aggressive go-to-market strategy in the next-generation threat protection space." The company has now raised a total of $56 million.

*Paydiant, a Wellesley, Mass., company that sells cloud-based technology designed to help retailers and banks handle mobile wallet payments, has raised an additional $15 million in venture funding from North Bridge Venture Partners, General Catalyst Partners, Stage 1 Ventures and two of Paydiant's customers. The company is now closing in on $35 million in total funding.

*Voxel, a company focused on making it easier for users to try out mobile apps via cloud and virtualization technology, received $1.6 million in seed funding from First Round Capital, Pinnacle Ventures and Sherpalo Ventures, not to mention Sanjay Jha, the ex-CEO of Motorola. "Voxel will revolutionize app discovery and distribution on mobile because it allows an app to perform with all the same features and capabilities of the native app without requiring it to be installed first," said David Zhao, co-founder and CEO of Voxel, in a statement. "Just as virtualization brought innovation and new security capabilities to the PC environment, we believe Voxel will offer a similar kind of transformation in mobile."

*Jelastic, a Palo Alto outfit with Ukrainian roots that provides a platform-as-a-service offering for moving Java apps to the cloud, has received unspecified funding from Maxfield Capital. The company previously has announced $2.5 million in funding.

* RiverMeadow Software, which operates out of San Jose and Westford, Mass., sells a software-as-a-service offering to help organizations migrate servers to public clouds. It has nailed down a $12 million B round of funding whose investors include Cisco, Violin Memory and others. "This latest funding round will allow us to continue to scale the company for future growth by expanding our engineering team and supporting our OEMs in meeting the growing market demands for cloud migration," said Mark Shirman, RiverMeadow CEO, in a statement.

* Datto, which sells a hybrid cloud-based backup, disaster recovery and continuity services through channel partners, has closed $25 million in growth equity financing led by General Catalyst Partners. The Norwalk, Conn., vendor says it plans to use the funds for international expansion, product development and enhanced services. This marks Datto's first funding since it started in 2007. Steve Herrod, former CTO of VMware and managing director at General Catalyst Partners, and Paul Sagan, executive vice chairman of Akamai Technologies, also join Datto's board.

*Log monitoring company Loggly announced last week that it has received a $10.5 million funding round from Cisco and others, bringing its total funding to nearly $21 million. Loggly, which competes with vendors such as Splunk, also just rolled out a new version of its cloud-based monitoring service.

Bob Brown tracks network research in his Alpha Doggs blog and Facebook page, as well on Twitter and Google +. 

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