In its third round of funding, the startup Appirio, which puts together various online business applications and platforms, has raised $10 million. The funding round, marking a $16.7 million total raising, was led by GGV Capital - with an $8.2 million investment - and included earlier investor Sequoia Capital, with a $1.8 million contribution.

Appirio's third funding round came fairly close after its first two - the first round was announced slightly over a year back, and the second round came about only in July 2008.

According to the Appirio CEO Chris Barbin, the new funding will largely go to three main areas - for building additional products for the key web platforms, like Google's App Engine; building up joint ventures with other companies; and making additions to its workforce.

Barbin said that the San Mateo, California-based Appirio - which at present has nearly 2,500 companies using its products, and about 
150 enterprise consulting clients - is soon planning to launch itself in the global arena, by commencing its first international operations in Japan.

Along with providing a range of professional services to help companies move into cloud computing, Appirio has developed three bestselling applications in Salesforce. com's AppExchange; and an application assimilating Facebook with Salesforce. 

In fact, "tying everything together" appears to be Barbin's goal towards helping businesses bring the many internet "clouds" together!