2016 Virtualization 50

Targeting The Virtualized Data Center

Vendors are talking more and more about the mythical software-defined data center, an architecture that someday will make it possible to move the key infrastructure components -- think compute, storage, networking, client computing and so on -- into a software layer sitting on top of commodity hardware. While it will take time to realize the benefits that a full software-defined infrastructure will bring, that isn’t stopping vendors of those various components from virtualizing key capabilities and turning them into software-defined whatever.

With all the changes, it’s important to realize that the channel remains at the center of the virtualization universe. Virtualizing a data center environment requires not only new software and services, but integration with a company’s business processes and legacy hardware and software.

Here are 50 key virtualization technology vendors working with channel partners.

Actifio

Headquarters: Boston

Ash Ashutosh, Founder, CEO

Actifio helps enterprises and service providers virtualize their data via its Virtual Data Pipeline technology, which decouples data from the infrastructure for increased resiliency and access to the cloud. It replaces siloed data management applications with an approach that lets data be captured from production applications and then managed and used when and where needed.

AppSense

Headquarters: Sunnyvale, Calif.

Scott Arnold, President, CEO

AppSense adds personalization to virtual desktop infrastructure based on Microsoft Hyper-V and Enterprise Desktop Virtualization, VMware Horizon View, and Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp environments. It gives IT departments granular management of endpoint policies, security and performance while providing user experience flexibility.

Big Switch Networks

Headquarters: Santa Clara, Calif.

Douglas Murray, CEO

Big Switch is an early SDN leader. Its flagship Big Cloud Fabric bare-metal SDN switching fabric targets new data center deployments for modern workloads like private clouds, while its Big Tap Monitoring Fabric provides an entry-level network monitoring solution. The company, which in January closed a $48.5 million funding round, now supports VMware NSX.

Blue Medora

Headquarters: Grand Rapids, Mich.

Nathan Owen, President, CEO

Blue Medora’s software integrates with industry-leading cloud system management and application performance management solutions to turn all the components of an IT ecosystem into a comprehensive solution to let IT teams visualize every platform and system. The software provides a clear view of product performance, tracks detailed metrics, and offers insights on problems before they happen.

Bromium

Headquarters: Cupertino, Calif.

Ian Pratt, Co-Founder, CEO

Bromium uses virtualization technology to provide cybersecurity. The company’s technology places every user task in a secure micro-VM (virtual machine) to protect endpoints against both known and unknown attacks, including zero-day attacks, drive-by downloads, spearphishing attacks, and advanced persistent threats. It provides real-time monitoring and alerting of attacks.

Catbird

Headquarters: Scotts Valley, Calif.

David Keasey, CEO

Catbird develops software-defined security for virtual infrastructures, with software that provides visibility into and protection of private clouds and virtual data centers based on VMware and OpenStack technology. The company in 2014 unveiled a solution for extending security policy automation across on-premise and OpenStack environments.

Cisco Systems

Headquarters: San Jose, Calif.

Chuck Robbins, CEO

Cisco provides server, networking and security technology for physical, virtualized and cloud data centers. Cisco is the king of partnering in virtualized data centers, combining its server and networking technology with storage from nearly every major vendor, and in March introduced its first self-developed hyper-converged infrastructure solution.

Citrix Systems

Headquarters: Santa Clara, Calif.

Kirill Tatarinov, President, CEO

Citrix provides a wide range of virtualization and cloud technologies including application and desktop virtualization, enterprise mobility management, file sync and sharing, cloud networking, collaboration and cloud services. Citrix in 2015 unveiled a cloud service to migrate VMware Horizon View clients to XenDesktop and XenApp, and collaborated with Red Hat on OpenStack clouds.

CloudPhysics

Headquarters: Santa Clara, Calif.

Jeff Hausman, CEO

CloudPhysics provides predictive analytics for IT. The company’s subscription-based software captures data from virtualized environments, analyzes it, and provides specific actionable insights to let IT teams optimize data centers and let service providers monitor and diagnose current and potential IT infrastructure issues and recommend remedial actions.

CoreOS

Headquarters: San Francisco

Alex Polvi, CEO

Linux developer CoreOS, funded in part by Google, develops a platform that allows the implementation of Google-like infrastructures across enterprise data centers. The solution combines CoreOS’ lightweight Linux distribution targeted at hosting Linux containers with the Kubernetes container management platform originally developed by Google along with the Tectonic and Quay container technologies.

Cumulus Networks

Headquarters: Mountain View, Calif.

JR Rivers, Co-Founder, CEO

Cumulus Networks develops three applications for industry-standard Ethernet switches to provide data centers with open networking: Cumulus VX open-source software to let cloud admins and network engineers test Cumulus Networks technology in virtual environments; the Cumulus Linux operating system; and Cumulus Rack Management Platform, a purpose-built network OS for out-of-band management switches.

DataCore Software

Headquarters: Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

George Teixeira, President, CEO

DataCore develops software-defined storage and virtual SAN solutions for scaling storage architectures. The company in 2015 extended its technology via the development of a hyper-converged infrastructure software stack, along with solutions that tie into SAP HANA and VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes technologies.

Dell

Headquarters: Round Rock, Texas

Michael Dell, Chairman, CEO

Dell offers a range of virtualized server and data storage systems for its data center customers. The vendor’s servers and storage systems are integrated with virtualization platforms such as VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix XenServer. Dell by year’s end will be the virtualization leader after it acquires EMC and VMware.

Delphix

Headquarters: Menlo Park, Calif.

Jedidiah Yueh, President, CEO

The Delphix Virtual Data Platform provides quick, secure and automatic data delivery. The technology accelerates enterprise applications and business intelligence by eliminating redundant infrastructure. The company in 2015 acquired Axis Technology Software to enable secure, self-service data delivery for application projects and closed a $75 million funding round.

Docker

Headquarters: San Francisco

Ben Golub, CEO

Docker is the company behind the open-source Docker platform, which allows an application to be created and run as a collection of Docker containers working across nearly any infrastructure to provide faster software development and increased infrastructure efficiency. Last year, the company closed a $95 million funding round and acquired four companies.

EMC

Headquarters: Hopkinton, Mass.

Joe Tucci, Chairman, CEO

EMC is a top provider of data storage, cloud and virtualization technology, enterprise security tools, and big data and analytics software. The EMC Federation builds solutions that combine technology from EMC Information Infrastructure, VMware, RSA, VCE and Pivotal. Its acquisition by Dell is on track to be completed this year.

Ericom Software

Closter, N.J.

Eran Heyman, Chairman, Chief Architect

Ericom Software provides server-based application access, virtualization, and RDP acceleration solutions to help customers access enterprise mission-critical applications using a variety of client systems. Its latest solution, Ericom Connect, supports up to 100,000 concurrent users per Connect Access Management Server with security, and provides centrally managed access to Windows applications and desktops from any device.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Headquarters: Palo Alto, Calif.

Meg Whitman, President, CEO

Hewlett Packard Enterprise, or HPE, is the heir to the former HP’s enterprise server, storage, data center infrastructure, physical and SDN, private cloud, and services businesses. HPE’s StoreVirtual software-defined storage technology is the centerpiece the company’s new hyper-converged infrastructure solutions.

Hitachi Data Systems

Headquarters: Santa Clara, Calif.

Jack Domme, CEO

Hitachi Data Systems develops virtual storage technology and converged and hyper-converged infrastructure solutions combining its servers and storage with servers and networking from multiple technology partners. The company has combined much of its disk and flash storage solutions behind VSP, its storage virtualization platform.

IBM

Headquarters: Armonk, N.Y.

Ginni Rometty, Chairman, President, CEO

For IBM, virtualization, storage and the cloud is now job No. 1 now that the company has sold its x86 server business to Lenovo. The company has turned its SoftLayer technology into a top public cloud offering and over the past year has invested heavily in storage virtualization technology and cloud-based security.

IGEL Technology

Headquarters: New York

Heiko Gloge, Managing Director, Partner

IGEL is a major developer of thin-client and zero-client devices and software for virtual desktop infrastructure solutions, including hardware devices with single-core, dual-core and quad-core processors; as well as models built into touch-screen displays; software to turn desktop and mobile PCs into thin clients; and virtual desktop management software.

Juniper Networks

Headquarters: Sunnyvale, Calif.

Rami Rahim, CEO

While Juniper Networks continues to be a significant provider of networking and network security technology, the company also has become a leader in SDN based on its Contrail platform and network function virtualization. The company expanded its wireless market in 2015 with alliances with Ruckus Wireless and Aerohive Networks.

Liquidware Labs

Headuarters: Alpharetta, Ga.

David Bieneman, Co-Founder, CEO

Liquidware Labs provides a series of desktop management software applications including Stratusphere FIT assessment solution for capturing desktop metrics; ProfileUnity for managing and migrating user profiles; FlexApp for managing on-demand applications; Stratusphere UX monitoring and performance diagnostic tools; and Flex-IO storage performance acceleration in virtual desktop infrastructure environments.

Maxta

Headquarters: Sunnyvale, Calif.

Yoram Novick, Founder, CEO

Maxta is the developer of the Maxta Storage Platform, which works with any combination of compute and storage devices in industry-standard servers to form a hyper-converged infrastructure solution for mission-critical applications, virtual desktop infrastructure, and remote and branch offices. The company also offers MaxDeploy, a fully configured hyper-converged infrastructure appliance.

Microsoft

Headquarters: Redmond, Wash.

Satya Nadella, CEO

Adopting Microsoft’s Hyper-V virtualization technology is the first step toward moving all or part of a business’ operations to Microsoft Azure, one of the industry’s leading public cloud platforms. Azure is supported by multiple leading Microsoft technologies including Office 365.

Midokura

Headquarters: San Francisco

Dan Mihai Dumitriu, Co-Founder, CEO

Midokura develops the MidoNet network virtualization platform. MidoNet includes a software layer that runs directly within existing physical network hardware to help centralize network control and improve data center efficiency. Version 5.0, released in February, now includes flow history through physical and virtual hosts, usage reports for tenant chargebacks, traffic counters and port mirroring.

Nexenta

Headquarters: Santa Clara, Calif.

Tarkan Maner, Chairman, CEO

Nexenta, which develops software-defined storage software, partners with vendors such as Dell and VMware in virtualized storage environments. Its flagship NexentaStor, and NexentaEdge, a software-only scale-out block-and-object storage solution with high-performance global inline deduplication and compression for Linux-based petabyte-scale clusters, are targeted at OpenStack environments.

Nutanix

Headquarters: San Jose, Calif.

Dheeraj Pandey, Chairman, CEO

Nutanix is the early leader in the hyper-converged infrastructure market with technology that combines compute and storage resources into a single appliance that scales both resources by connecting additional nodes. The company expanded its channel presence with deals to let Dell and Lenovo OEM its software stack on their hardware.

Oracle

Headquarters: Redwood Shores, Calif.

Mark Hurd, Safra Catz, Co-CEOs

Oracle offers a full range of virtualization technologies from desktop to server, networking and data center. The company has been busy expanding its capabilities, including a couple of key acquisitions including the February purchase of Ravello Systems, which developed nested virtualization technology, and the December purchase of Docker container startup StackEngine.

Palo Alto Networks

Headquarters: Santa Clara, Calif.

Mark McLaughlin, Chairman, President, CEO

Palo Alto focuses on protecting networks from targeted cyberattacks. The company’s integrated platform combines network, cloud and endpoint security to detect and prevent attacks against physical and virtualized environments. Palo Alto in 2015 launched Aperture, a service to solve security challenges around sanctioned SaaS applications such as Box, Dropbox, Google Drive and Salesforce.

Parallels

Headquarters: Seattle

Birger Steen, CEO

Parallels develops cross-platform solutions that allow clients to use and access their applications and files on any device or operating system, including Windows, Mac, iOS, Android or the cloud. The company’s solutions allow access to applications and files regardless of whether they are local, remote, in a private data center or in the cloud.

Pivot3

Headquarters: Austin, Texas

Ron Nash, Chairman, CEO

Pivot3 builds its scalable Pivot3 Enterprise HCI converged compute and storage appliances. The software offers shared compute and storage resource pools for tasks like VMware Horizon Suite-based virtual desktops and business continuity and disaster recovery. The company in January acquired NexGen Storage to bring dynamic quality-of-service capabilities to hyper-converged infrastructure solutions.

Plexxi

Headquarters: Nashua, N.H.

Rich Napolitano, CEO

Plexxi develops SDN software that configures a network based on application requirements. That software sits on the company’s software-definable hardware platform, which Plexxi said can be configured based on application requirements. The company last fall received a $35 million funding round, and in January received an unspecified amount of funding from GV (formerly Google Ventures).

Plumgrid

Headquarters: Santa Clara, Calif.

Larry Lang, CEO

SDN vendor Plumgrid offers the Plumgrid Open Networking Suite 4.0 to help enterprises and service providers operationalize OpenStack cloud’s virtual networks and SDN deployments. Plumgrid CloudApex is an SDN visualization and monitoring platform that works with Plumgrid ONS to display real-time status of OpenStack physical and virtual resources.

Pluribus Networks

Headquarters: Palo Alto, Calif.

Kumar Srikantan, CEO

Pluribus Networks’ Netvisor operating system for SDN is a programmable, open-source-based solution that is highly available and scalable. The company claims it runs Layer 2 and Layer 3 networking more efficiently and at a lower cost than traditional switching infrastructure while providing agility, insight and security for data center networking.

Primary Data

Headquarters: Los Altos, Calif.

Lance Smith, Chairman, CEO

Primary Data delivers dynamic data mobility through data virtualization via its storage-agnostic DataSphere platform, which provides intelligent, automated data mobility across different storage tiers without application disruption while turning islands of storage into globally available resources. DataSphere operates outside the data path to provide performance and scalability and to create a virtualized global dataspace.

Red Hat

Headquarters: Raleigh, N.C.

Jim Whitehurst, President, CEO

Red Hat continues to be a major force in the virtualization market, challenging VMware with Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and building a strong software-defined storage presence. The company in 2015 expanded its capabilities to work with Linux-ready containers, as well as in software-defined storage based on its Ceph and Gluster technologies.

Al Monserrat

RES Software

Headquarters: Radnor, Pa.

Al Monserrat, CEO

RES started out in the user data virtualization space and has since branched out into security and IT management. Its software leverages predictive analytics to identify anomalous behavior in a user’s workspace while also letting IT admins lock down apps and data to specific sets of users.

Silver Peak

Headquarters: Santa Clara, Calif.

David Hughes, Founder, Chairman, CEO

WAN optimization technology developer Silver Peak’s flagship solution Unity is an intelligent WAN fabric for tackling increasingly complicated data paths between physical locations by monitoring the status of those paths and dynamically routing traffic on an optimal path. Last year, the company shifted its strategy to focus more on broadband WAN optimization.

SimpliVity

Headquarters: Westborough, Mass.

Doron Kempel, CEO

SimpliVity develops the OmniCube converged infrastructure solution that combines server and storage capabilities into a single x86-based system available exclusively via the channel. In addition to its own line of hyper-converged infrastructure appliances, SimpliVity provides its technology for Cisco and Lenovo servers. The company last year introduced the third generation of its technology.

StrataCloud

Headquarters: Atlanta

Brian Cohen, CEO

StrataCloud develops unified infrastructure management solutions for turning virtual, converged and cloud environments into a software-defined infrastructure. Its StrataCloud SDI platform abstracts data center resources into a software-defined layer while automating infrastructure installation and application provisioning. StrataCloud VMC is a virtualization management solution for VMware-based virtual environments.

Stratoscale

Headquarters: Marlborough, Mass.

Ariel Maislos, Founder, CEO

Hyper-converged infrastructure software developer Stratoscale, funded in part by Intel Capital, Cisco and SanDisk, develops software that, when combined with industry-standard servers, competes with such vendors as Nutanix, SimpliVity and VMware. The startup late last year officially released its first solution, Stratoscale Symphony, which scales from three to hundreds of nodes.

Talari Networks

Headquarters: San Jose, Calif.

Emerick Woods, President, CEO

Software-defined WAN developer Talari Networks’ Thinking SD-WAN technology proactively manages network capacity, reliability and performance in real time, packet by packet. This adaptive private networking software combines detailed one-way measurement of each packet with intelligent link aggregation to create an intelligent, self-correcting network to help applications continue without interruption even during failures.

Teradici

Headquarters: Burnaby, British Columbia

Dan Cordingley, President, CEO

Teradici is known for PC-over-IP, software and hardware technology that boosts multimedia performance on virtual desktops and devices, allowing 3-D graphics and high-definition video to run over a remote connection. The company is a key partner of VMware and works with Amazon Web Services.

Unidesk

Headquarters: Marlborough, Mass.

Don Bulens, President, CEO

Unidesk virtualizes everything above the hypervisor, including the Windows operating system, applications and users, as separately managed layers to help simplify building, patching and supporting virtual desktops. Its technology is integrated with VMware Horizon View, Citrix XenDesktop and Microsoft Remote Desktop Services. The company last year extended its capabilities to Windows Server and Hyper-V.

VDIworks

Headquarters: Austin, Texas

Saad Hussain, President, CEO

VDIworks sells virtual desktop and cloud computing software, including VDI Pro, a virtual desktop delivery platform that handles deployment of cloud-hosted VDI or Desktop-as-a-Service. Its software supports HTML5 clients and is integrated with the XenServer Hypervisor. Its VDI solution in January was certified by CenturyLink for use with the CenturyLink Cloud platform.

Veeam

Headquarters: Baar, Switzerland

Ratmir Timashev, CEO

Veeam is a leading provider of data protection technology for virtualized environments. The company offers tight integration with Microsoft Azure and VMware vCloud Air to extend data protection to the cloud. Veeam Availability Suite v9, introduced in January, enables SLAs for recovery time and point objectives of less than15 minutes for all applications.

VeloCloud

Headquarters: Mountain View, Calif.

Sanjay Uppal, Co-Founder, CEO

VeloCloud develops a cloud-delivered software-defined WAN solution that terminates, inspects and applies differentiated treatments to traffic in the data plane. It is a cloud-based, multitenant solution that connects to applications worldwide located in private, public, SaaS and hybrid data centers. Service providers and partners can take advantage of pay-as-you go capabilities.

VMware

Headquarters: Palo Alto, Calif.

Pat Gelsinger, CEO

VMware remains the leader by far in terms of the platform used by companies to virtualize their IT as the first step toward building cloud infrastructures. VMware has built on that strength to become a leader in virtualized networking, storage and data center infrastructure, and is moving fast to be a cloud technology leader.

Zerto

Headquarters: Boston

Ziv Kedem, Co-Founder, CEO

Zerto develops disaster recovery software for virtual and cloud environments. Its flagship Zerto Virtual Replication product competes with VMware’s Site Recovery Manager and others. The software supports replicating and migrating data between VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisors, and from private clouds to public clouds. The company in January closed a $50 million funding round.