Goldman Sachs isn't letting the current economic meltdown hinder its investment in systems management software maker Nimsoft. The financial services firm is among three contributors to pony up funds for Nimsoft’s US$12 million second round of funding.

"Despite the tough economic times, we were overwhelmed with interest from multiple prestigious investors," said Gary Read, president and CEO of Nimsoft, in a statement. "An investment from Goldman Sachs is further recognition of the strength of our business model, product performance and future business opportunity."

Goldman Sachs led the $12 million round, which also included contributions from Series A investors JMI Equity and Northzone Ventures. Nimsoft, which earlier this year acquired Indicative Software, says it will put the additional funds to work on products and services that further challenge established management vendors.

"To operate modern data centers, it is critical for IT customers to have robust systems management software that is easy to deploy and maintain to ensure they are providing the right level of service to their businesses," said David Campbell, vice president of Principal Investment Area at Goldman Sachs, in a statement. "Nimsoft has a proven track record of delivering this functionality to both large and small enterprises and managed service providers around the world."

Nimsoft says its software combines a low-cost entry point (about $10,000) with ease of administration to offer potential customers an alternative to offerings from the four market-leading management vendors: BMC, CA, HP and IBM.

Nimsoft's NimBUS' software automatically discovers IT infrastructure components, deploys preconfigured monitoring thresholds, populates dashboards and generate reports on monitored network devices, servers, applications and business services.

With the Indicative acquisition complete, Nimsoft has more than 160 employees and some 700 customers. The company says it has seen 534% revenue growth over the past four years, making it one of the fastest growing systems management companies.

"Nimsoft has an innovative, well-run business model with a strong management team," Goldman Sachs' Campbell added. "We are pleased to invest in Nimsoft to enable further growth as a leading enterprise systems management provider."

Nimsoft closed in January 2007 a US$10.3 million Series A round of funding from JMI Equity and Northzone Ventures. As part of this latest funding round, Campbell, lead Goldman Sachs investor, will join the Nimsoft board of directors alongside Peter Arrowsmith of JMI Equity and Torleif Ahlsand of Northzone Ventures.