Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Weblayers lands Papows as CEO and $3M funding

By Galen Moore

Former Cognos Inc. and Lotus Development Corp. CEO Jeff Papows has taken the helm at WebLayers Inc., a venture-funded software governance company located in Cambridge, Papows and the company report.

Papows stepped in as CEO on Dec. 15, he said, replacing interim chief executive Gregg Bjork. Bjork took over the corner office at WebLayers after the death of former CEO Irwin Wallace in 2006. Most recently, Papows was CEO of the Burlington-based commercial navigation company Maptuit Corp.

WebLayers has also raised a $3 million fourth round of funding from return investors Ascent Venture Partners, Cedar Fund and Veritas Venture Partners. A contingency for $3 million in additional funds is also available if required, Papows said.

WebLayers, founded in 2002, provides automated governance of service oriented architectures (SOAs), a development method that aims to allow diverse applications to exchange data.

“Frankly I can just about spell SOA with a little help,” Papows quipped. “But I do understand markets.”

WebLayers is well-positioned in a space where IT departments are trying to do more with less, and major institutions are merging data infrastructure. The company has worked with Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC) on its acquisition of Merrill Lynch in this capacity, he said.

“Software governance amongst other things is about doing more with less, and it’s about interoperability of disparate systems,” Papows said. “I see WebLayers as at the onset of that same kind of market convergence.”

The $3 million is a “growth round,” he said, which will be spent heavily on marketing and sales. “There really isn’t a lot of competitive fragmentation,” Papows said. “Truthfully I wish there were more, because we’re having to do a lot of the heavy lifting on the marketing side to define the market.”

The recent round brings WebLayers’ total funding to about $12 million, Papows estimated. The company last raised $7 million in a third round announced July, 2007.

WebLayers also plans to expand its staff and move its operations to a nearby Cambridge address. Papows said the majority of hires will take place in professional services, sales and engineering divisions of the company.