Goldman spends $70m on a stake in AppSense

Goldman Sachs is buying a minority stake in AppSense for $70m (£43m) and putting managing director Peter Perrone on the British software company's board.

The money will be used to expand AppSense in the United States, in a sector expected to boom to as much as $2bn in the coming years.

AppSense specialises in "user virtualisation" software, which allows a company's employees to access documents and programmes in any location on any device. The 12-year-old company already has offices in the US, Germany, Australia and the UK, and is on track for 60 per cent revenue growth this year.

Customers include major government departments and large corporations such as BT and United Airlines.

"We appreciate the magnitude of what this investment will allow us to do," said Darron Antill, the chief executive of AppSense. "Effective user virtualisation solutions are critical to any enterprise's future desktop strategy and will only continue to increase with the growth of cloud and mobile-device platforms."

The company aims to grow from 300 to more than 450 staff this year, and may consider a stock market flotation in three to four years.

Goldman's Mr Perrone said: "AppSense's strong customer traction, history of innovative solutions in desktop computing, and the record growth over the past two years further solidified our decision to invest in the company."

Last month the banking giant invested $500m with Russia's Digital Sky Technologies in social networking site Facebook, as part of a $1bn share offering to a group of investors.