Microsoft Ventures announces first enterprise seed investment

SkyGiraffe, an Israeli startup working on enterprise technology, is the first recipient of seed investment by Microsoft Ventures.

On Tuesday at the DLD Tel Aviv Digital Innovation 2013 conference, Microsoft announced the backing of the Tel Aviv-based firm in a blog post -- the first startup to receive support since the Ventures program was launched in June.

SkyGiraffe is a cloud company that brings mobility to the enterprise by providing a SaaS platform that helps businesses deploy enterprise-grade mobile applications on multiple devices. Microsoft says that given the demand for smartphones and tablets in the workforce, "application services are a strategic priority for enterprise companies."

The startup has offices in the United States and Israel, and was co-founded by CEO Boaz Hecht and VP of R&D Itay Braun in 2012. Hecht said:

"Given Microsoft's backing, initially as part of BizSpark, then by participating in Microsoft Ventures Accelerator in Israel provided an incredible set of resources and technical experts to get our business off the ground. Now that we are ready to scale our sales capabilities, gaining Microsoft as an investor and partner is a great vote of confidence and an unmatched distribution partner to massively increase our trajectory in the enterprise services market."

Microsoft Ventures is a global effort to offer entrepreneurs tools, resources, expertise and routes to market through mentorship, technology guidance, seed funding and joint selling opportunities.