Andreessen Horowitz raises more dough for enterprise disruption

Andreessen Horowitz raised $1.5 billion for its third venture capital fund and has landed $2.7 billion since inception. The fun part is that the VC firm seems hellbent on disrupting the enterprise establishment.

That goal is interesting given that enterprise companies usually don't get a lot of venture capital love. The other bonus is that Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, founders of Loudcloud, have enterprise chops.

Full disclosure. VC money and startups aren't really my thing. Most startups fail and I prefer to be a semi-fast follower. Startups are a clubby world that borders on those middle school cliques that still annoy you.

However, I'm interested in Andreessen Horowitz's enterprise portfolio, which is almost evenly split with its consumer side. These companies have the potential to raise a ruckus. Apptio is a next-gen cloud management outfit; Fusion-io is a data center play; Okta is making identity management easy; and Tidemark can meld analytics with mobile.

These companies can all be disruptive and that's good—enterprise customers could benefit from seeing established vendors shaken up a bit.