Apax Partners has provided $5.8m (€4.8m) in first round funding to Tideway Systems, headed by Richard Muirhead, six months after backing his brother Charlie, when it led a £15m second round funding for Nexagent, a communcations software company.

Michael Chalfen, a director of Apax in London, said that managing information technology infrastructure was a priority for major enterprises. "Companies have so far lacked information on enterprise systems management. Tideway has a uniquely scalable, easily deployable approach to solving this fundamental problem," he said.