Systems management software maker FiveRuns announced Monday that it had garnered US$6.2 million in funding from Austin Ventures.

The company previously received a US$2.95 million investment from Austin Ventures in October 2005, and FiveRuns executives say the additional US$6.2 million validate the market interest in and significance of the Ruby on Rails platform on which the company built its product.

"All of the industry signposts are pointing to Rails becoming a significant framework for Web application development. FiveRuns is squarely positioned to augment this wave by delivering products in support of its growth," said Olivier Thierry, president and CEO of FiveRuns, in a statement.

FiveRuns was founded in 2005 and began its business using a software-as-a-service delivery model for its product designed to monitor systems running Apache, JBoss, Linux and more. The company over the past year updated its business model and launched in May a new software platform, Rails Management Suite.

Ruby on Rails is an open source Web application development framework on which FiveRuns built its management platform. The company has made available two applications from the suite: RM-Manage and RM-Install. The latter is a freeware application that helps customers develop, deploy and manage Rails applications. The company says RM-Install has been downloaded more than 1,000 times since its release in May.

The company also announced this week that Thierry, previously of Mission Critical Software and NetIQ, was recently appointed to his current position at FiveRuns.