CRN Spotlight: 10 Hot Emerging Vendors For June 2010

Step right up and get what may very well be your first look at 10 hot new vendors that are exploding onto the scene. Each month CRN profiles 10 new vendors that are looking to shake up the industry in various technology segments, from security to cloud computing, from software to hardware. These startups know the importance of the channel and are looking to align with valued partners to get their names and products out.

Take a look and get introduced to 10 vendors that are ready for prime time.

Gigenet

Company: Gigenet
Tech Sector: Services
Key Product: Gigenetcloud


The Lowdown: Gigenet, Arlington Heights, Ill., in 1997 started as a virtual Web hosting and application development provider, but re-launched in 2004 as a provider of managed dedicated servers, cloud servers, virtual servers, co-location, and managed storage backups. The company offers a 100 percent uptime SLA for its managed dedicated servers, and its cloud hosting services start at $10 per month or 1.3 cents per hour.

Hosting providers can repackage and resell Gigenet’s services to their customers while providing Level 1 and Level 2 support in return for benefits including a discount of up to 30 percent. Or they can sign on as affiliate partners and receive commissions for customers brought to Gigenet.

Bountiful Wi-Fi

Company: Bountiful Wi-Fi
Tech Sector: Networking
Key Product: BWRACWALL Series Controller


The Lowdown: Founded in 2004 in Bountiful, Utah, Bountiful Wi-Fi touts its products as some of "the most powerful Wi-Fi products and solutions allowed by law." Its BWRACWALL Series Controller (pictured) is one of the principal products available through VARSense, the company's channel-oriented discounting program, through which Bountiful targets VARs, systems integrators and IT managers -- enterprise or SMB -- with a particular emphasis on hospitality, health-care and education sales.

Sentrigo

Company: Sentrigo
Tech Sector: Database Security
Key Product: Hedgehog Enterprise


The Lowdown: Sentrigo, founded in 2006, offers a full suite of products for vulnerability assessment, virtual patching and database monitoring/auditing. The company's flagship product, Hedgehog Enterprise (pictured), provides database activity monitoring (DAM) and real-time intrusion prevention, protecting sensitive data from both external threats and misuse by privileged insiders.

Hedgehog can be quickly deployed at small and midsize organizations but also scales to handle large enterprises, according to the company. It provides full visibility into all database activity and allows enterprises to enforce security policy and comply with regulatory requirements, such as PCI DSS, Sarbanes-Oxley, and HIPAA.

Think Outside Of Box

Company: Think Outside Of Box
Tech Sector: Hardware
Key Product: TOOB


The Lowdown: Founded by Alexander McDonnell in July 2009, La Verne Calif.-based Think Outside Of Box makes an immersive omni dome projection theater called the TOOB -- an IMAX theater for the home, according to the startup's head of sales, James Pizzola. Think Outside Of Box is also working with 3D content developers to add to the visual feast of viewing media in a TOOB.

TOOB units come in a variety of sizes, including the 6 ft. x 3 ft. x 3 ft. TOOB F and the 3 ft. x 1 1/2 ft. x 1 1/2 ft. TOOB M, all the way up to the inflatable 16 ft. x 8 ft. x 8 ft. version. The company is actively seeking North American channel distributors and already has channel partners in the U.K. and in South Korea. TOOBs are priced as low as $550 for the dome, without a projector or sound system.

’The interest we’ve gotten has been quite honestly overwhelming. We’re looking for anybody who likes to experience media, whether it’s video games, movies or entertainment on the desktop,’ said Pizzola, who joined the company in early 2010. The startup is on pace to sell between 1,500 and 2,000 units this year, he said.

VersaReports

Company: VersaReports
Tech Sector: Software
Key Product: VersaReports Universal Report Server


The Lowdown: Report servers, such as SAP’s Crystal Reports and Microsoft’s SQL Server Reporting Services, are essentially portals for back-end reporting engines that businesses use to schedule and manage the dissemination of reports to managers and employees.

So why are most report servers priced according to the number of users? ’That just seems wrong,’ said Andy Feibus, managing partner with Atlanta-based VersaReports LLC, in an interview. ’There’s no reason that report servers have to be priced on a per-user basis.’

VersaReports, founded in early 2009, developed VersaReports Universal Report Server, which uses Microsoft’s .Net framework to connect with a range of commercial and custom reporting engines. VersaReports’ software, which first hit the market in December, is priced at $4,995 per server for systems with no more than two CPUs (with an unlimited number of cores) and $14,995 for big servers with more than two CPUs.

Atlanta-based VersaReports initially focused its sales efforts on report designers, Feibus said, but it’s seeking alliances with business intelligence and accounting software vendors and their resellers, and with solution providers with business intelligence and report design expertise. Resellers and end-customers can add their own logo to the VersaReports interface (see screenshot). The company already sells its product through Component Source, a major development tools distributor.

Lucid Imagination

Company: Lucid Imagination
Tech Sector: Software
Key Product: LucidWorks Certified Distribution for Solr


The Lowdown: The search and discovery market is growing at a brisk pace of 28 percent annually, with 2007 revenue of $1.8 billion, according to IDC. Lucid Imagination offers certified distributions of Lucene and Solr, commercial-grade support, training, high-level consulting and value-added software extensions. The company’s web site serves as a knowledge portal for the Lucene community, with information and resources to help developers build and deploy Lucene-based solutions in a more efficient and cost-effective manner.

AutoVirt

Company: AutoVirt
Tech Sector: Storage
Key Product: AutoVirt file virtualization solution


The Lowdown: AutoVirt is riding the wave of two hot technology trends: virtualization and file system centralization. The Nashua, N.H.-based company's flagship AutoVirt software platform is designed for storage area networks and the cloud.

Founded in 2007, AutoVirt helps companies get a handle on the data they're creating and moves that data to the right place based on how it's being used, helping to minimize the costs of securing and backing up that data, according to Brian Gladstein, vice president of marketing for AutoVirt.

AutoVirt is sometimes compared to the likes of EMC, Compellent and NetApp. But one key difference, Gladstein says, is that AutoVirt employs a hardware-agnostic, software-based approach to managing distributed data across multiple devices.

For now, the midmarket is AutoVirt's main target. That's because companies in this segment are being exposed to SAN and data de-duplication but don't have the in-house expertise to deploy these technologies. With AutoVirt, midmarket firms can adopt these technologies at their own rate using virtualization, says Gladstein.

AutoVirt has done some direct sales in the past but is now in the process of ramping up its channel. The company has 14 partners currently and plans to sign up between 50 and 100 more within the next 12 months, according to Gladstein.

Armorize Technologies

Company: Armorize Technologies
Tech Sector: Security
Key Product: Armorize AppSec Suite


The Lowdown: Santa Clara, Calif.-based Armorize Technologies, founded in 2005, prides itself on protecting enterprise companies from hackers attempting to exploit vulnerable Web applications, and preventing data theft, compliance failure and financial loss due to zero-day exploits. Its flagship product, the Armorize AppSec Suite, comprises three separate components: CodeSecure, a static source code analysis platform; HackAlert, a cloud-based zero-day malware drive-by download alerting system; and SmartWAF, a host-based Web application firewall. The AppSec suite complements system and network controls, and touts flexible, cost-effective and efficient security controls for both Web applications and the underlying infrastructure.

Cumulux

Company: Cumulux
Tech Sector: Software
Key Product: Manage Axis cloud monitoring and management


The Lowdown: Founded in 2008 in Chicago, Cumulux takes to the cloud to deliver products and services for enterprises to strategize, develop and operationalize cloud computing applications. Implementing SaaS solutions based on Microsoft Windows Azure, Amazon EC2 and Salesforce.com's Force.com, Cumulux has five channel partners currently, but is looking to bring on more to offer its line of Axis cloud management and monitoring tools, such as Manage Axis, which can monitor and manage Windows Azure-based applications.

KnowledgeTree

Company: KnowledgeTree
Tech Sector: Software
Key Product: KnowledgeTree SaaS/License Editions


The Lowdown: KnowledgeTree has a unique back story: the company was founded in 2006 in Cape Town, South Africa, with the intention of building a business around open-source document management software. And by the spring of 2007, KnowledgeTree’s eponymous flagship software product reached 300,000 downloads via the open-source portal SourceForge.net. Fast forward to 2010 and the company now has both an on-site license version of its enterprise content management software as well as a software-as-a-service version called KnowledgeTree Live. The company, which is now headquartered in Raleigh, N.C., also re-launched a new partner program in March to attract more channel partners.

For a look at the companies in CRN's May 2010 Emerging Vendors spotlight, click here.