Emerging Vendors 2014: Virtualization Vendors

Virtualization Virtuosos

Each year in our Emerging Vendors list, CRN explores hot tech startups that understand the value of channel partnerships. The list spans every discipline and technology facet of the IT industry. Here we look at the emerging vendors in the virtualization space that combine innovative offerings with a strategy to leverage the channel. The vendors on this list do it all in virtualization, from creating entire virtualization infrastructures, to providing more niche offerings such as desktop, data center and storage virtualization solutions and services.

Anuta Networks

Milpitas, Calif.

Top Executive: Founder, President and CEO Chandu Guntakala

Anuta Networks develops network services virtualization technologies, including its NCX controller for campus, branch office and data center networks, and nCloudX controller that simplifies and automates network services in complex, heterogeneous networks in service provider deployments.

CloudPhysics

Mountain View, Calif.

Top Executive: CEO Jeffrey Hausman

CloudPhysics uses predictive analytics to protect virtual data centers. Founded by former VMware employees, the company offers a cloud-based service that gathers billions of samples of operational data from business customers and dissects them to identify potential problems within virtual server, storage and networking systems.

Delphix

Menlo Park, Calif.

Top Executive: President and CEO Jedidiah Yueh

Delphix virtualization technology creates multiple copies of a database to support application development, QA testing and backup. It makes a single copy of a database and shares it over multiple database instances. In addition to cutting storage costs, Delphix's approach shrinks the time needed for provisioning databases from days to minutes.

Green Cloud Technologies

Greenville, S.C.

Top Executive: CEO Shaler Houser

Green Cloud Technologies offers virtual servers, based on VMware's technology, which provide scalability, high availability and high performance for critical data and applications. The vendor also provides a range of Infrastructure-as-a-Service and disaster recovery services.

Intigua

Newton, Mass.

Top Executive: CEO Shimon Hason

Intigua doesn't just virtualize servers or storage or networking, it covers provisioning, configuration and ongoing management of the entire IT stack. This level of monitoring means organizations can be certain they're getting a high level of performance and availability for their mission critical-apps running in virtual and cloud environments.

Liquidware Labs

Alpharetta, Ga.

Top Executive: Co-Founder and CEO David Bieneman

Liquidware Labs develops desktop virtualization technology, including Stratusphere FIT and Stratusphere UX for desktop visibility, and ProfileUnity with FlexApp and FlexDisk for desktop portability. The company won VMware's prestigious Technology Innovator Partner of the Year award.

Midokura

San Francisco

Top Executive: Co-Founder and CEO Dan Mihai

Midokura's network virtualization technology is a software layer that installs and works on top of physical network hardware, allowing data center administrators to control networks as they do servers and storage. Midokura works with OpenStack, CloudStack and a wide range of cloud software.

Nuage Networks

Mountain View, Calif.

Top Executive: Founder and CEO Sunil Khandekar

Nuage Networks is a software-defined networking venture backed by Alcatel-Lucent. The company develops a virtualized services platform for rapidly connecting virtual machines to a network, helping organizations quickly deploy cloud services.

PernixData

San Jose, Calif.

Top Executive: Co-Founder and CEO Poojan Kumar

Founded by VMware and Oracle veterans, PernixData offers hypervisor software that virtualizes server-side flash memory through a software-defined storage system called the Flash Virtualization Platform. In April the company, which sells 100 percent through the channel, launched its PernixPrime technical certification program for partners.

Pluribus Networks

Palo Alto, Calif.

Top Executive: President and CEO Kumar Srikantan

Pluribus brings together compute, network, storage and virtualization into a single, programmable, software-defined network platform with the company's Netvisor distributed network hypervisor operating system at its core. The startup also has been working with Red Hat on OpenStack-based network virtualization.

Proximal Data

San Diego

Top Executive: Founder and CEO Rory Bolt

Founded by former EMC executives, Proximal Data develops the AutoCache technology that tackles I/O bottlenecks in virtual environments by putting technology inside the hypervisor, thereby reducing the amount of flash storage customers need to buy. In May the company debuted AutoCache for Microsoft's Hyper-V.

Saisei Networks

Sunnyvale, Calif.

Top Executive: CEO Bill Beckett

Saisei Networks calls itself "the only combined solution for virtualized real-time network visibility and control." The startup is developing its Virtualized Internet Traffic Management software, capable of running on most any x86-based system, to help network operators better manage network traffic, resources and applications.

VDIworks

Austin, Texas

Top Executive: President and CEO Saad Hussain

VDIworks is a leading developer of virtual desktop and cloud computing software. In December the company launched VDI Pro, a virtual desktop delivery platform with high-end management features for deploying cloud-hosted VDI or Desktop-as-a-Service. The software supports HTML5 clients and is integrated with the XenServer Hypervisor.

VeloCloud

Los Altos, Calif.

Top Executive: CEO Sanjay Uppal

VeloCloud is looking to reinvent traditional wide area networks by leveraging virtualization and cloud technology. The vendor says its cloud-based WAN architecture drives a cost reduction of between 60 percent and 85 percent compared with traditional WAN architectures where services are delivered, piece-by-piece, on hardware appliances.

VMTurbo

Boston

Top Executive: CEO Benjamin Nye

VMTurbo delivers a software-defined control platform for cloud and virtualized environments. The company’s products, including VMTurbo Operations Manager, utilize its Economic Scheduling Engine to dynamically adjust system configuration, resource allocation and workload placement to meet service levels and business goals.

Zerto

Boston

Top Executive: Co-founder and CEO Ziv Kedem

Zerto focuses on business continuity and disaster recovery technology for virtual and cloud environments. Its flagship Zerto Virtual Replication product competes with VMware's Site Recovery Manager for the hearts and minds of enterprises in this red-hot part of the market.