Emerging Vendors 2014: Data Center Vendors

Dynamite In The Data Center

CRN's annual Emerging Vendors list examines the hottest tech startups in multiple disciplines throughout the technology industry. But it's not all about the technology with these guys. The vendors on this list know the value of a good partnership and have a serious commitment to the channel. The data center category includes innovative companies in everything from server hardware and converged systems, to IT management systems, to development tools. Take a look at the hottest tech startups in the data center from the Emerging Vendors list for 2014.

6Fusion

Raleigh, N.C.

Top Executive: Co-Founder, CEO John Cowan

6fusion provides a cloud management platform that enables workload distribution by turning clouds into pay-per-use billable utilities. The technology makes it easy for partners to deliver pay-as-you-go services to customers with a cloud-based metered offering for cloud, enterprise IT and Web applications.

Adapteva

Lexington, Mass.

Top Executive: CEO Andreas Olofsson

Adapteva develops and builds what it calls the most energy-efficient microprocessor chips and single board computers in the world. In January the company raised $3.6 million to complete development of what it calls energy-efficient parallel computing chips.

AppNeta

Boston

Top Executive: CEO Jim Melvin

AppNeta develops network and application performance monitoring and management tools. In June the company struck an alliance with N-Able by SolarWinds to develop Web application performance and availability monitoring tools for managed service providers.

Artisan Infrastructure

Austin

Top Executive: CEO Brian Hierholzer

Artisan Infrastructure is a wholesale Infrastructure-as-a-Service provider, delivering custom-built infrastructure on demand to a global network of service providers from fully redundant, geographically diverse data centers. Its Cornerstone Virtual Private Data Center (vPDC) platform provides a secure, multitenant and highly available infrastructure platform.

Ayehu

Englewood Cliffs, N.J.

Top Executive: President, CEO Gabby Nizri

Ayehu develops and markets enterprise-class IT process automation systems. In July the company extended its technology into the security automation space by integrating its eyeShare automation software with security systems such as antivirus, security information and event management, and network access control.

Boundary

Mountain View, Calif.

Top Executive: President, CEO Gary Read

Boundary offers cloud-based application and network monitoring software that combines real-time data streaming, alerts, analytics and visualization technology that help businesses manage their cloud and on-premise IT systems. The company raised $22 million in C Series funding in April.

Catchpoint Systems

New York

Top Executive: Co-Founder, CEO Mehdi Daoudi

Catchpoint, led by former DoubleClick and Google executives, provides customers with Web and infrastructure monitoring solutions, helping them understand the performance of their online services. In May the company announced a significant expansion of its global Web and mobile performance monitoring locations.

ClearCenter

Orem, Utah

Top Executive: CEO Michael Proper

ClearCenter builds server, network and gateway hardware running the company's ClearOS software. The company also develops applications and services for those systems, including security audit and intrusion protection, remote system monitoring, and remote backup software.

Continuum Managed Services

Boston

Top Executive: CEO Michael George

Continuum calls itself "the industry's only channel-exclusive provider of fully integrated managed IT services solutions." Its managed services help MSP partners maintain on-premise and cloud-based servers, desktops and other endpoints for SMBs.

DeskCenter USA

Long Beach, N.Y.

Top Executive: President, CEO Hans Kaemmlein

DeskCenter USA offers the DeskCenter Management Suite, software that optimizes administrative tasks for both physical and virtual desktop and client devices and the software running on them.

Espresso Logic

San Jose, Calif.

Top Executive: CEO R. Paul Singh

In May Espresso Logic released its Live Browser development software that companies use to quickly build Web and mobile applications that access back-end databases such as Oracle Database, MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server. Live Browser provides an instant HTML5 user interface to a database with built-in row and column security.

FieldSolutions

Minnetonka, Minn.

Top Executive: Founder, CEO Mac Lewis

FieldSolutions provides contingent field service resources serving the technology industry. The company has more than 40,000 independent field service technicians throughout the U.S., Canada and Mexico serving a broad range of technologies, including PCs, copiers and printers, telephony, routers, cabling, ATMs, point-of-sale systems and even data center support.

FieldView Solutions

Edison, N.J.

Top Executive: Founder, CEO Frederick Dirla

FieldView's data center infrastructure management software helps improve data center energy and space efficiency. Last year the company launched the FieldView Solutions Partner Program to help resellers augment their data center services with FieldView's management and monitoring product.

Formlabs

Somerville, Mass.

Top Executives: Co-Founders Maxim Lobovsky, Natan Linder

Formlabs manufactures high-resolution, desktop 3-D printers. In June the company launched the Form 1+, an extensive redesign of the vendor's flagship stereolithographic printer.

Henge Docks

San Francisco

Top Executive: CEO Matthew Vroom

Henge Docks builds what it says are the world's only Apple docking solutions. In June the company released a vertical docking station for the MacBook Pro with Retina display.

Igneous Systems

Seattle

Top Executive: CEO Kiran Bhageshpur

Started by a team of executives and engineers from Amazon Web Services, NetApp, EMC and Microsoft Azure, Igneous Systems wants to change the way businesses build and scale data centers using the cloud. The startup is staying quiet about the details, but best guesses say it's working to bring the same kind of data center management technologies used by AWS and Google to mainstream businesses.

ITinvolve

Houston

Top Executive: Co-Founder, CEO Logan Wray

ITinvolve's software collects data from disparate sources to help management understand and analyze dependencies between IT requirements, policies, applications, releases and infrastructure. The vendor's ITinvolve Service Manager, ITinvolve Drift Manager and ITinvolve Agility Manager create a trusted DevOps data foundation for making IT development and deployment decisions.

Loggly

San Francisco

Top Executive: CEO Charlie Oppenheimer

Loggly develops cloud-based log management software that collects huge volumes of data from applications and systems and makes sense of it in real time. IT managers use Loggly to quickly spot problems within operational applications, identify the root causes and resolve the issues.

LogicMonitor

Santa Barbara, Calif.

Top Executive: CEO Kevin McGibben

LogicMonitor develops a cloud-based IT performance monitoring platform that IT operations managers use to monitor IT applications, services and infrastructure, including servers, storage systems, networks, websites and virtualized systems.

Netecs

Norco, Calif.

Top Executive: Senior Vice President, Sales David Parks

Netecs designs, builds, implements, and supports voice, video, cabling and data center solutions in conjunction with asset management capabilities and fully supported OEM products. The company specializes in the development of custom technology systems.

Nutanix

San Jose, Calif.

Top Executive: Founder, CEO Dheeraj Pandey

One of the rising stars in the converged infrastructure arena, Nutanix develops SAN-less virtualized data center systems the company said are hyper-efficient, massively scalable and elegantly simple. The Nutanix Virtual Computing Platform offers combined compute and storage in a single appliance.

Power Assure

Santa Clara, Calif.

Top Executive: President, CEO Pete Malcolm

Power Assure develops software-defined power management applications that provide visibility, intelligence, analytics and automation to help IT and facilities managers optimize capacity, service levels, and power consumption within and across data centers.

The company launched its EM/5 next-generation monitoring system in April.

Prelert

Framingham, Mass.

Top Executive: CEO Mark Jaffe

Prelert develops machine learning and analytics software used to detect anomalies in IT systems by sifting through huge volumes of operational data. Products include Anomaly Detective, Anomaly Detective for Splunk Enterprise, and Anomaly Detective Engine and API.

PubNub

San Francisco

Top Executive: Founder, CEO Todd Greene

The PubNub Realtime Network technology provides the cloud infrastructure and building blocks for developing real-time applications that can be deployed on a large scale. PubNub applications are capable of securely and reliably streaming data between connected devices and servers.

QASymphony

Atlanta

Top Executive: CEO Dave Keil

QASymphony provides software testing and test management tools that help businesses take advantage of Agile software development methodologies. In May the company launched a major update to its qTest software, as well as offering the product in three editions: qTest Project, Pro and Enterprise.

RiverMeadow Software

San Jose, Calif.

Top Executive: President, CEO Mark Shirman

RiverMeadow Software developed an automated server migration platform that carrier and service providers use to migrate physical, virtual and cloud-based servers into and between public, private and hybrid clouds.

SaltStack

Salt Lake City

Top Executive: Co-Founder, CEO Marc Chenn

SaltStack develops systems management tools that help enterprise cloud and DevOps IT organizations with server configuration, data center infrastructure automation, and cloud orchestration. The products are based on the Salt open-source configuration management software.

Sideband Networks

San Jose

Top Executive: Co-Founder and CEO Zane Taylor

Sideband Networks develops network performance management and visualization tools that analyze live network traffic, helping network administrators recognize and address network issues. The company raised $6 million in Series A funding in February.

SimpliVity

Westborough, Mass.

Top Executive: CEO Doron Kempel

SimpliVity is one of the high-flying startups in the converged infrastructure arena with its OmniCube appliance that integrates virtualization, networking, server and storage management. Earlier this month the company launched its first formal channel program in an effort to scale its business.

SlimWare Utilities

D'iberville, Miss.

Top Executive: Founder, CEO Chris Cope

SlimWare Utilities offers a line of community-based utility software for PC cleaning and optimization, including SlimCleaner, SlimComputer and SlimDrivers.

StratITsphere Data Center Solutions

Katy, Texas

Top Executive: President Darin Cook

StratITsphere provides data center and cloud computing services to small, midsize and large enterprises. In May the company joined with distributor Arrow Electronics to distribute StratITsphere's services to VARs, managed service providers and systems integrators.

Talari Networks

San Jose, Calif.

Top Executive: President, CEO Emerick Woods

Talari's Mercury line of appliances aggregate multiple, diverse networks into a single virtual WAN, providing affordable IP bandwidth sources to deliver high-performance and reliability for customers from SOHOs to data centers. The company's products are based on its Adaptive Private Networking technology.

TSO Logic

Vancouver, B.C.

Top Executive: Founder, CEO Aaron Rallo

TSO Logic targets data center power costs with a lightweight software solution that provides application-aware power management. The agentless, non-invasive software sits on a single server and operates with no impact on data center performance.

VCE

Richardson, Texas

Top Executive: CEO Praveen Akkiraju

VCE, formed by Cisco and EMC with investments from VMware and Intel, develops converged infrastructure technology and cloud-based computing models. VCE's Vblock System delivers a completely integrated IT offering.

Virtual Instruments

San Jose, Calif.

Top Executive: CEO John Thompson

Virtual Instruments develops the VirtualWisdom infrastructure performance management system for physical, virtual and cloud computing environments. The platform provides real-time performance visibility for the entire open-systems stack along with metrics that assess system utilization, improving the performance and availability of mission-critical applications.

Xi3

Salt Lake City

Top Executive: Founder, President, CEO Jason Sullivan

Xi3 develops modular computers, including the power-efficient Z3RO desktop computer designed for thin-client and digital signage applications. In June the company announced a partnership with Intel to develop, manufacture and sell "next-generation Micro-Mini PCs."