On-premises software delivery company Replicated Inc. is much richer today after grabbing $50 million in a new round of funding.

The Series C round was led by Owl Rock, a division of Blue Owl Capital. New investors Lead Edge Capital and Headline, and existing investors Two Sigma Ventures, Amplify Partners, BoldStart, Ridgeline and Heavybit also participated in the round.

Replicated sells tools that help software makers create and deploy on-premises versions of their applications.

What Replicated’s platform does is reduce the amount of work involved in adapting an application to run on on-premises servers. Normally, doing so can take weeks or even months because software makers need to make auxiliary components such as an installer to set up the application on customers’ hardware. Replicated delivers ready-made components that save companies the hassle of creating them.

The company provides an installation engine that enables an app to be deployed on-premises or in a public cloud. It uses the open-source container orchestration software Kubernetes as the foundation on which applications are deployed. If the container framework isn’t already setup in the customer’s environment, Replicated will embed this together with the app.

Users also get an administrator console for managing their various Replicated-powered app deployments. Through this console, customers can create backups of their apps and data, patch them and perform other maintenance tasks.

“Traditionally, deploying on-premise software requires teams of engineers to build and maintain instances across a wide variety of environments,” Replicated co-founder and Chief Executive Grant Miller told SiliconANGLE. “A high level of customization and close work with a customer is necessary for each install and, as a result, this can slow down the process. Often professional services or field operations need to be involved in each customer install.”

Other problems with on-premises deployments include the need for a much higher level of dedicated information technology department oversight and customer support after the initial installation, Miller said. SaaS traditionally automates remediation and maintenance, which many on-premises implementations cannot do.

Replicated’s platform is popular, used by more than half of enterprises in the Fortune 500. Many of those customers are software makers, including the likes of UiPath Inc., HashiCorp Inc., Puppet Inc., Rocket.Chat, Circle Internet Services Inc. and PluralSight Inc.

Replicated’s popularity might be surprising given the trend of delivering enterprise software in the cloud. But the company points out there are many scenarios when on-premises deployment might be preferable. It cites data from a recent survey by Dimensional Research of more than 400 software makers, which showed that over 90% reported growth in on-premises sales in the last five years. That proves there is still very strong demand for on-premises software.

Indeed, Miller reckons the future of software delivery will actually be “multi-prem,” where software makers will be able to deploy their applications on any customer environment with relative ease.

“Over half of the on-premises software deployments done via Replicated’s tools are actually deployed into a public cloud, which is why we call it multi-prem software,” he said. “Instead of a software vendor deploying the application into their own public cloud account and hosting it for the customer, we’re providing the enterprise with the necessary automation to host it themselves in whatever public cloud provider they prefer.”

Miller said there are many situations where so-called multi-prem deployments are preferable to the cloud. For instance if an organization has security concerns, multi-prem software means that they can stop sending data out to hundreds or thousands of different app vendors and instead host their apps where their data resides, he said. This means organizations can maintain better control over the flow and visibility of their data.

“Securing this funding will allow Replicated to continue revolutionizing how software is delivered and how enterprises manage it,” Miller said.

Analyst Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. told SiliconANGLE that despite all the talk about moving to the cloud, on-premises applications are alive and well, and with that comes a demand for on-premises automation, just as automation exists in the cloud.

“Enterprises need to go on-premises for performance, data residency and sometimes just to keep old practices going,” he said. “The primary enabler of on-premises automation is Kubernetes and that is what Replicated is using to power its platform. Enterprises always welcome more options for deploying their applications, so today’s funding is a good sign.”

Moving forward, Replicated said today’s funding will enable it to focus on accelerating growth and expanding into more markets around the world.

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