Verari Extends Its Blade Operations

At about 60 percent, year-over-year growth, San Diego-based Verari is aiming to globalize its operations, as well grow into new vertical markets that can take advantage of the remote, thermal- and power-saving management features it has developed.

Last month, Verari announced it had received an infusion of $13.26 million in a round of funding headed up by Carlyle Venture Partners, the Washington-based venture firm specializing in infrastructure- and defense-based companies.

David Driggers, CEO of Verari, said that while the company currently sees 70 percent of its revenue from companies in North America, it would seek to put some of the new financing toward globalizing its client base. Verari already has a number of clients with global operations, including Boeing, ConocoPhillips, Industrial Light and Magic, Lockheed Martin and Novartis, and hopes to expand this list and increase its global capacities, Driggers said.

The new funding "really fits into one of our ongoing goals, which is to continue to expand our international operations. We'd like to spread our footprints into new regions. We felt Carlyle would give us some nice inroads," Driggers said.

A key differentiation Verari can offer large enterprises is out-of-band system management of its blade systems, such as the ability to remotely manage units within a blade rack despite power failure issues, he said.

"Part of the problem with the way that the bigger guys have looked at out-of-band [management] is that [their solutions] still require in-band [management]," Driggers said. "It still requires power at the blade, and power and connectivity to the networking. If the power fails, you can't tell what's happening on the band. If the power fails at the blade level, we want to be able to detect that and monitor and manage that."

Verari provides blade systems based on several platforms, including Advanced Micro Devices' Opteron and Intel's Xeon and Itanium processors, and will soon begin offering blades based on IBM's Power5 processors.

Verari caters primarily to the gas, oil and entertainment industries, but Driggers said his company is poised to take advantage of growing blade adoption by large financial companies as well.