Apparently Stephan Schambach still knows how to pull the strings in the ecommerce industry. After raising two rounds Series A with $10 million | Series B with $12 million from US based investors in the last 18 months, Demandware closed a deal to sell equity and to set up a joint data center with German monolith T-Systems worth another $12 million in cash and services. In rather harsh English:

In a deal with Deutsche Telekom, Intershop founder Stephan Schambach wants to focus his US firm Demandware Inc. more on the German market for rentals in Internet retail sales. Schambach announced that T-Systems Venture Fund has purchased a holding in Demandware, though he did not provide any figures. Overall, the deal is worth 12 million dollars (9.4 million euros), but several investors are involved. In addition, a data center will be set up jointly with T-Systems, and the sale of solutions for Internet retail rentals has also been agreed. Demandware is offering companies a platform for online sales of their products. The first customer to collaborate in Germany is retail chain Promarkt.

Demandware has shown impressive growth in an area many thought has been milked already for years (b2c ecommerce shops that is). Schambach has taken learnings from Intershop and applied it in a smart way to the US market in 2005. There are rumors that SAP and Oracle, who have strong retail offerings but no meaningful presence in the B2C eCommerce market, might be interested in a deeper look at Demandware.