Amazon invests in Engine Yard's cloud computing

Software company Engine Yard said Monday that it has closed on a $15 million Series B round of financing from New Enterprise Associates and Amazon.com. Its previous investor Benchmark Capital also participated in the round.

Engine Yard, a 2-year-old company based in San Francisco, handles deployment and operations for developers that work in the Web development environment of Ruby on Rails, an open-source software framework. It helps developers serve applications through so-called cloud computing, or via third-party data centers. Despite Amazon's investment, Engine Yard does not use the online retailer's Web services offering at this time. It plans to in the future, however.

Engine Yard, which had raised about $3.5 million in January, said it will use the money for research and development of its upcoming cloud computing platform, among other projects. As part of the funding announcement, Peter Sonsini, a partner at NEA, will join Engine Yard's board of directors.