30. Apptio

Technology business-management software

Sunny Gupta, Co-founder, President & CEO of Apptio.
Source: Apptio
Sunny Gupta, Co-founder, President & CEO of Apptio.

Founders: Sunny Gupta (CEO), Paul McLachlan, Kurt Shintaffer
Date launched:
2007
Funding: $136 million
Industries disrupted:
Enterprise Technology, Software
Disrupting: Microsoft, Oracle, VMWare
Competition: ComSci, Costnomics, Transparent IT

Over the past decade, the role of chief information officer has changed dramatically at most large companies. No longer just the executive who oversees technology spending, a CIO is at the very heart of a corporation's strategic direction. Now, third-party companies are dedicated to helping CIOs manage and measure the value of IT in the same way other business functions are evaluated by outside consultants.

A 7-year-old company based in Bellevue, Washington, Apptio created a market discipline called technology business management (TBM), an SaaS platform that lets companies measure the cost, quality and usage of their IT resources. Apptio attracted investment from the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.

Read More FULL LIST: 2014 CNBC DISRUPTOR 50

Thirty-five Fortune 100 companies are customers, and the list is growing, according to Apptio. A sign of how quickly CIOs have embraced the outside help: Apptio started a CIO user group—the TBM Council—to promote it. Today, the council is a standalone organization with more than 1,000 members, including IT leaders at Facebook, Goldman Sachs and Coca-Cola.

Who do you dream of putting out of business?

"We are serving a market need that didn’t already exist. ... None of the legacy vendors can innovate, and Apptio is taking advantage of the disruption in enterprise IT." -Sunny Gupta, CEO

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