CRN's Data Center 100: Part 1

Data Center 100: Part 1

CRN's Data Center 100 highlights the technology vendors that are powering today's data center. From cloud hosting services, to virtual data center solutions, to data backup tools, this list covers it all. For more of CRN's Data Center 100, check out Part 2 of our list.

A10 Networks
San Jose, Calif.
Lee Chen
Founder, CEO


A10 Networks develops server load balancers along with appliances for bandwidth management and network identity management to help companies of all sizes accelerate, optimize and secure their applications. The company's products provide data centers with application delivery, carrier, and cloud and virtualization solutions, with sales going completely through indirect channels.

Acronis

Woburn, Mass
Jason Donahue
CEO


Acronis develops backup, recovery and security technology for physical, virtual and cloud environments. Its Backup & Recovery 10 software centralizes the management of all workstation and server backup and disaster recovery activities in Windows and Linux environments. Its disaster recovery, deployment and migration software helps users protect digital information, maintain business continuity and reduce downtime.

Akorri

Littleton, Mass.
Allan Wallack
President, CEO


Akorri's'BalancePoint software provides server to storage performance analysis and capacity planning for both physical and virtual environments. It gives customers visibility into the root cause of data center performance issues through deep drill-down into server and storage resources to help best implement both server and storage virtualization.

APC by Schneider Electric

West Kingston, R.I.
Laurent Vernerey
President, CEO


American Power Conversion (APC) serves data center customers with a series of UPS, power distribution, cooling, and security and monitoring products. Its flagship solution, InfraStruxure, is a scalable and adaptable, providing power, cooling, racks, security and management components as part of an integrated system for single-rack closets to enterprise data centers.

AppSense

New York
Charles Sharland
Chairman, CEO


Data centers deploying virtual desktop infrastructures over any of the major virtualization platforms can use AppSense to manage user-specific information independent of the desktop and apply it into any virtual desktop on-demand. This enables standardized desktop builds, automated desktop and application delivery, and the ability to migrate users to new desktops.

Arista Networks

Santa Clara, Calif.
Jayshree Ullal
President, CEO


Arista Networks is a developer of Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet switches for large data center and high-performance computing environments. The company's switches, which are also used to implement compute clouds, are based on its own software platform, the Extensible Operating System, which provides for single-image consistency across hardware platforms.

Avaya

Basking Ridge, N.J.
Kevin Kennedy
President, CEO


Avaya provides unified communications hardware and software, contact center networking and communications equipment, data networking solutions, and related solutions and services directly and through channel partners to enterprises of all sizes looking to improve productivity.. Avaya in late 2009 acquired the networking and phone business of Nortel.

AVG Technologies

Chelmsford, Mass.
J.R. Smith
CEO


AVG is a worldwide developer of security technologies related to software development, threat detection, threat prevention and risk analysis. In addition to detecting and protecting against Internet and e-mail viruses, the company also offers realtime technology to protect customers in online, cloud and social networking environments.

Axis Communications

Lund, Sweden
Ray Mauritsson
President, CEO


Axis develops network video solutions for professional installations, with an emphasis on digital network security surveillance and remote monitoring. The company's product line includes network cameras, video servers, video decoders, video management software, and related accessories. Its portfolio includes video solutions, cameras and servers for installations ranging from entry level to professional level

Barracuda Networks

Campbell, Calif.
Dean Drako
President, CEO


Barracuda Networks offers comprehensive content security, data protection and application delivery solutions via premises-based gateways and software, virtual appliances, cloud services and remote support. Barracuda's portfolio includes spam and virus firewalls, Web filters, instant message firewalls, Web application firewalls, SSL VPNs, a data backup service and more.

BlueArc

San Jose, Calif.
Mike Gustafson
President, CEO


BlueArc develops storage that supports both NAS and SAN services on a converged network. The company's storage systems virtualize up to 8 petabytes or 16 petabytes of data in a single namespace of usable, tiered storage, supported by the company's proprietary file system and data management and data protection technologies.

Blue Coat Systems

Sunnyvale, Calif.
Mike Borman
President, CEO


Blue Coat's Application Delivery Network (ADN) infrastructure optimizes and secures the flow of information to any user on any network, and works with the company's application performance monitoring, WAN optimization and secure Web gateway technologies to classify and prioritize applications, content and access in realtime while accelerating applications across a distributed enterprise.

BMC Software

Houston
Robert Beauchamp
Chairman, CEO


BMC's unified Business Service Management platform simplifies and automates IT processes and orchestrates workflow across cloud, virtual, distributed and mainframe resources. BMC helps data center clients with initiatives in cloud computing, data center automation, cost transparency, decision support automation, risk and governance, service management and more.

Broadcom

Irvine, Calif.
Scott McGregor
President, CEO


Broadcom is a major developer of semiconductors for wired and wireless communications, with products that enable the delivery of voice, video, data and multimedia to and between businesses of any size. The company's technologies are found throughout the data center, including inside networking, communications, security, mobile and storage products.

Brocade Communications Systems

San Jose, Calif.
Michael Klayko
CEO


Brocade develops networking solutions for storage, Ethernet and converged networking environments. The company has long been a leader in the storage networking market, and thanks to its 2008 acquisition of Foundry Networks is now one of the two top alternatives to Cisco for data center IP networking.

CA Technologies

Islandia, N.Y.
William McCracken
CEO


CA Technologies develops IT management software and solutions for customers across mainframe and physical to virtual and cloud environments. The company's products include a wide range of service, product and management software, the ARCserve family of data management and protection software, and a comprehensive set of IT security solutions.

Canonical Group

Boston
Mark Shuttleworth
Founder of the Ubuntu project


The Canonical Group is the primary backer of the Ubuntu Linux operating system for servers and desktop and notebook PCs. While Ubuntu is available for free, the company offers fee-based support, including helping customers use it to take advantage of public or private clouds.

Check Point Software Technologies

Redwood City, Calif.
Gil Shwed
Chairman, CEO


Check Point delivers a comprehensive suite of products for securing customer networks, data and end points, all unified under a single management framework. The company's offerings include security gateway solutions, security management solutions, and end-point security solutions, most of which can be delivered in physical and virtual environments as an appliance or via the company's software blades.

Cisco Systems

San Jose, Calif.
John Chambers
CEO


Cisco is the leading vendor of networking solutions, including for IP and storage networks in physical, virtual and cloud environments. In the past couple of years, it has entered the server business, and ties its server and networking technologies into a converged infrastructure offering it calls Unified Computing System.

Citrix Systems

Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Mark Templeton
President, CEO


Citrix, once best known as the leader in thin-client computing, has since become a leading provider of technology for building virtual server and desktop environments. Citrix also provides technology for hosting, managing and delivering cloud-based computing services and is a pioneer of online collaboration technology.

CommVault

Oceanport, N.J.
N. Robert Hammer
Chairman, President, CEO


CommVault is the developer of the Simpana line of data protection software. Simpana 9 provides a full range of data protection functions, including backup and recovery, data snapshots, deduplication, replication, storage resource management, disaster recovery, compliance, eDiscovery, and storage cloud integration across both physical and virtual IT environments.

Compellent

Eden Prairie, Minn.
Phil Soran
Chairman, President, CEO


Compellent is a developer of virtualized storage solutions for sharing storage resources in physical and virtual server environments. Its products feature automated tiered storage and the ability to continually upgrade existing storage capacity with the latest technology. The company is now being acquired by Dell.

Crossbeam Systems

Boxborough, Mass.
Mike Ruffolo
President, CEO


Crossbeam develops network security solutions based on a series of pr-configured or modular hardware appliances that provide a high-performance, scalable virtual infrastructure. Performance scales to up to 150 Gbps as extra modules are added. Security partners of the company include McAfee, Sophos, Check Point, Sourcefire, IBM, Imperva, Trend Micro and Websense.

CyberPower Systems

Shakopee, Minn.
Michael Ho
President


CyberPower is the second-largest manufacturer of UPS systems and surge protection products based on retail sales and shipments. It offers products providing a wide range of data center capabilities, including UPS, surge protection, power distribution units and network power management, as well as DC power devices for telecom environments.

Cymphonix

Salt Lake City
Brent Nixon
President, CEO


Cymphonix is a developer of secure Web gateways that combine hardware and software into a solution for managing and optimizing customers' Internet connectivity while shielding them from connection risks. The company's Network Composer platform supports 25 to 50,000-plus users with up to 1 Gbps of sustained throughput capability.

DataCore Software

Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
George Teixeira
President, CEO


DataCore develops storage virtualization software for virtual and physical IT environments. The company's flagship SANmelody software virtualizes disk pools of between 500 GBs and 32 TBs while providing synchronous mirroring, caching of up to 1 TB per node, load balancing, thin provisioning, continuous data protection and remote replication.

Dell

Austin, Texas
Michael Dell
Chairman, CEO


Dell traditionally has been a major supplier of servers and PCs to the data center, but in the past couple of years has expanded via acquisitions into enterprise storage and professional services, and recently rolled out its Dell Vertical Integrated System of solutions combining server, networking, storage and software resources.

Eaton

Cleveland, Ohio
Alexander Cutler
Chairman, CEO


Eaton is a large enterprise with businesses ranging from automotive technology to hydraulics to power distribution. In the data center, it is one of the largest providers of power quality and monitoring technology, including UPS systems, backup batteries, power distribution, power conditioning, surge protection, energy management and monitoring technology.

EMC

Hopkinton, Mass.
Joe Tucci
Chairman, President, CEO


EMC is the industry' largest system-independent provider of storage technology to customers from small businesses to enterprises. It is also a major data center force through its ownership of virtualization leader VMware and security provider RSA, as well as via its enterprise content management and data warehousing technologies.

Emerson Network Power

Columbus, Ohio
David Farr
Chairman, CEO


Emerson is a leading supplier of data center power and cooling equipment, which it sells mainly under the Liebert brand. The company provides UPS systems, DC power systems, data center and telecom performance monitoring solutions, surge protection, racks and integrated cabinets, and dynamic computer room air conditioning solutions.

ESET

San Diego
Andrew Lee
CEO North America


ESET is the developer of the ESET NOD32 Antivirus integrated security solution which detects and disables viruses, trojans, worms, adware, spyware, phishing, rootkits and other Internet threats. It also offers the ESET Smart Security integrated antivirus, antispyware, antispam and personal firewall solution. ESET also offers online threat protection for Macs.

ExaGrid Systems

Westborough, Mass.
Bill Andrews
President, CEO


ExaGrid develops software that lets data centers implement scalable disk-based backup solutions that work with existing backup applications from companies such as CA, CommVault, EMC, Microsoft and Symantec. Its solution combines SATA drives with compression, byte-level deduplication, and a scalable grid architecture for fast, secure backups and restores.

F5 Networks

Seattle
John McAdam
President, CEO


F5 Networks develops networking appliances focused on application delivery networking. The company's product line includes its BIG-IP family of application delivery controllers for access control and application security, the ARX file virtualization appliances, FirePass SSL VPNs, Data Manager file virtualization appliances, and software to manage them.

FalconStor Software

Melville, N.Y.
James McNiel
President, CEO


FalconStor develops scalable and open network storage solutions for optimizing the storage, protection, efficiency and availability of enterprise data and applications. The company's primary technology is its IPStor storage virtualization platform on which it builds solutions for continuous data protection, virtual tape libraries, network storage servers and deduplication systems.

Fedora Project

Open-Source Distribution

The Fedora Project is the developer of the open source Fedora distribution of the Linux operating system, which is the third-most popular version of Linux. It is sponsored by Red Hat, which discontinued its prior Red Hat Linux distribution when Red Hat Enterprise Linux, based on Fedora, was released.

Force10 Networks

San Jose, Calif.
Henry Wasik
President, CEO


Force10 Networks develops high-performance networking products, including Ethernet switches and routers, for data center, service provider, and enterprise customers. The company's modular Force10 Operating System software delivers a unified end-to-end networking solution from the server and storage edge to the network core and into the cloud.'

Fortinet

Sunnyvale, Calif.
Ken Xie
President, CEO


Fortinet develops network security and unified threat management appliances to provide data centers with high-performance protection against dynamic security threats. Its flagship product, the FortiGate security platform, offers such functions as firewall, VPN, intrusion prevention, antivirus, antispyware, antimalware and Web filtering to protect against network, content and application-level threats.

Fujitsu America

Sunnyvale, Calif.
Anthony Doye
President, CEO


Fujitsu America offers a complete portfolio of computing platforms and business technology services for customers in the retail, manufacturing, health-care, government, education, financial services, and telecommunications sectors. Products include Intel-based and SPARC-based servers, enterprise storage systems, desktop PCs, notebook and tablet PCs, and workstations.

Fusion-io

Salt Lake City
David Flynn
CEO


Fusion-io's ioDrive line of Flash storage modules for servers provide high-speed local data storage at a lower cost than SSDs. The ioDrive family includes four server and workstation adapter sthat provide up to 6.0 GBps of bandwidth and 5.12 TBs of capacity with a single PCIe slot.

Hewlett-Packard

Palo Alto, Calif.
Leo Apotheker
President, CEO


HP is the largest IT producer in the world, supplying data centers with servers, storage, desktop and mobile PCs, networking gear, printers, mobile devices and more. The company is also on the forefront of developing converged infrastructures combining server, storage and networking resources into a single data center architecture.

Hitachi Data Systems (HDS)

Santa Clara, Calif.
Jack Domme
CEO


HDS is one of the top-three system-independent midrange and enterprise storage system vendors. Its flagship product is the Virtual Storage Platform, which scales in capacity and performance while virtualizing both HDS and non-HDS capacity into flexible storage pools. Its Hitachi Dynamic Tiering software automates the migration of storage between multiple tiers.

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies

San Jose, Calif.
Steve Milligan
President, CEO


Hitachi GST is a hard disk drive and SSD manufacturer formed from a merger of the storage technology businesses of IBM and Hitachi. Its hard drives include models ranging from mobile models to enterprise-class models, including versions with capacities of up to 2 TBs.

IBM

Armonk, N.Y.
Sam Palmisano
Chairman, President, CEO


IBM is one of the top vendors of server, storage, software and security products for data centers and provides a full range of IT, business consulting, application, outsourcing, and training services. It is one of only a handful of vendors providing complete hardware and software solutions to data centers.

Infortrend

San Jose, Calif.
Stone Lo
CEO


Infortrend manufactures SAN, NAS, and direct-attach storage systems based on proprietary ASICs. The company has four primary product lines including the ESVA line of Fibre Channel or iSCSI SAN arrays, the EonStor DS family of low-cost SAN appliances, the EonStor scalable SAN appliances, and the EonNAS unified SAN-NAS appliances.

Intel

Santa Clara, Calif.
Paul Otellini
President, CEO


Intel produces the microprocessors, chipsets and graphics controllers that power the majority of servers and PCs in the data center, as well as key components used to build storage, networking, security and other products. Intel recently branched out into developing SSDs, and is in the process of acquiring security vendor McAfee.

Isilon

Seattle
Sujal Patel
President


Isilon is a developer of scale-out NAS technology that was just acquired by EMC. Isilon's OneFS operating system allows customers to add storage nodes without disrupting storage operations up to a maximum of 10.4 Petabytes in a single file system while scaling performance to up to 45 GBps.

Juniper Networks

Sunnyvale, Calif.
Kevin Johnson
CEO


Juniper Networks provides a broad portfolio of networking offerings, including routing, switching, security, application acceleration, identity policy and control, and management products. And that portfolio will continue to grow with acquisitions in December of wireless LAN provider Trapeze Networks and virtualization security developer Altor.

Kaspersky Lab

Woburn, Mass.
Stephen Orenberg
Americas President


Kaspersky claims to be the world's largest privately held antimalware company, with both residential and business products. The company is focused specifically on malware protection from the desktop to the cloud, including smartphones, and provides software to protect both internal corporate communications and interactions with the outside world.

McAfee

Santa Clara, Calif.
David DeWalt
President, CEO


McAfee is still the world's largest dedicated security-only vendor, at least until the pending acquisition of the company by Intel closes, as is expected early in 2011. McAfee security solutions protect customer infrastructures from en points to the network to mobile devices while helping manage risk, regulatory and compliance needs.

Mellanox Technologies

Sunnyvale, Calif.
Eyal Waldman
Chairman, CEO


Mellanox develops end-to-end connectivity solutions for servers and storage for optimizing data center performance. Its product line includes InfiniBand adapters and switches, along with 10-Gbit Ethernet adapters and gateways that tie InfiniBand and Ethernet together. The company is in the process of acquiring fellow InfiniBand developer Voltaire Systems.

For more of CRN's Data Center 100, check out Part 2 of our list.