25 Coolest Emerging Vendors
Forget Cisco, Microsoft and HP. Upstart emerging vendors are socking it to the lumbering old school players with innovative cutting-edge technology backed up by channel programs that pack more margin and support.
Here is our list of the 25 coolest emerging vendors selected from our list of 178 companies in the CRN 2008 Emerging Vendors report. These are the sleek red Ferraris of the technology set zooming past your parents' Volvo.
Product line: Ruckus ZoneFlex Smart WLAN system is a centralized wireless LAN solution designed specifically for the channel
Featured Product (pictured): Zoneflex Director
Channel Recruitment Goal: More than 250 partners for broad international coverage
Ideal Partner: Enterprise-focused solution provider
Product Line: An enterprise fixed mobile convergence platform sold through the channel to extend enterprise voice and unified communications to cell phones
Featured Product (pictured): RoamAnywhere Mobility Router
Channel Recruitment Goal: 50 partners or fewer for broad national coverage
Ideal Partner: Enterprise-focused solution provider with a strong background in WLAN and unified communications
Product Line: Linux-based, open-source routing and security software and appliances that run on standard x86-based hardware
Featured Product (pictured): Vyatta 514
Channel Recruitment Goal: 51 to 250 partners for broad national coverage
Ideal Partner: Midmarket-focused solution provider
Product Line: The MoGo Mouse is a revolutionary, business card-size, Bluetooth-enabled mouse that stores and charges inside your laptop's PC card or ExpressCard/54 slot
Featured Product (pictured): MoGo Mouse
Channel Recruitment Goal: 50 partners or fewer for limited international coverage
Ideal Partner: Volume-oriented reseller
Product Line: Teneros provides a family of application continuity appliances for high availability and disaster recovery of Microsoft Exchange
Featured Product (pictured): Application Continuity Appliance
Channel Recruitment Goal: 51 to 250 partners for broad international coverage
Ideal Partner: Midmarket-focused solution provider
Product Line: VarPhonex provides tools and features for VARs to sell the private-label VoIP service under their own brand names
Channel Recruitment Goal: 51 to 250 partners for broad international coverage
Ideal Partner: Networking- or telephony-focused service provider
Product Line: Lightweight, voice-controlled communication devices that allow users to converse over a wireless LAN (802.11b/g)
Featured Product (pictured): Vocera "badge"
Channel Recruitment Goal: 50 partners or fewer for limited international coverage
Ideal Partner: Enterprise-focused solution provider
Product Line: The Aveksa Access Governance Platform includes Aveksa Compliance Manager and Aveksa Role Manager
Featured Product (pictured): Aveska Dashboard
Channel Recruitment Goal: 50 partners or fewer for limited international coverage
Ideal Partner: Enterprise-focused solution provider
Product Line: Offers a range of hosted e-mail services, for e-mail security, archiving, discovery and recovery and business continuity
Channel Recruitment Goal: 51 to 250 partners for broad international coverage
Ideal Partner: SMB-focused solution provider
Product Line: A unified end-point security solution
Featured Product (pictured): Stormshield
Channel Recruitment Goal: 250 to 500 partners for limited U.S. regional coverage
Ideal Partner: Enterprise-focused solution provider
Product Line: Packet capture and stream-to-storage appliance that captures and records at full-line rates, even on 10-GB networks.
Featured Product (pictured): Solera DS Appliance
Channel Recruitment Goal: 50 partners or fewer for limited international coverage
Ideal Partner: Enterprise-focused solution provider
Product Line: A commercial-grade open-source security gateway for the SMB market
Featured Product (pictured): Untangle Gateway Platform
Channel Recruitment Goal: 51 to 250 partners for limited international coverage
Ideal Partner: MSP
Product Line: Storage consolidation, centralized management, automation and advanced data protection in Windows, Linux and other server environments
Featured Product (pictured): Swarm 3000
Channel Recruitment Goal: 51 to 250 partners for broad international coverage
Ideal Partner: Enterprise-focused solution provider
Product Line: A cost-effective, agentless storage reporting platform leveraging all of the benefits of Web 2.0 architecture.
Featured Product (pictured): Aptare Storage Console
Channel Recruitment Goal: 50 partners or fewer for broad international coverage
Ideal Partner: Storage-focused VAR
Product Line: An information recovery platform for delivering backup and recovery as a service Featured Product (pictured): Televaulting
Channel Recruitment Goal: 50 partners or fewer for limited international coverage
Ideal Partner: Wireless-, convergence-, or security-focused VAR
Product Line: CAStor is a scalable, high-performance and cost-effective CAS (content addressed storage) based product that runs on any x86 hardware
Channel Recruitment Goal: 50 partners or fewer for broad international coverage
Ideal Partner: Volume-oriented VAR
Product Line: Application-Aware Storage systems for midsize and enterprise organizations
Featured Product (pictured): Pillar Axiom
Channel Recruitment Goal: No set number of partners for broad international coverage
Ideal Partner: Enterprise-focused solution provider
Product Line: Backup solutions
Featured Product (pictured): Rebit Ridiculously Simple Backup
Channel Recruitment Goal: 51 to 250 partners for broad international coverage
Ideal Partner: Small-business-focused solution provider
Product Line: Provides storage solutions that deliver iSCSI SAN, NAS and WAN replication functions from a single virtualized storage platform
Featured Product (pictured): RelData 9240 System
Channel Recruitment Goal: 50 partners or fewer for limited international coverage
Ideal Partner: Midmarket-focused solution provider
Product Line: Exanodes' software solution creates a shared storage system using the cluster's own hard disks, which are customarily underused
Featured Product (pictured): Exanodes GUI
Channel Recruitment Goal: 51 to 250 partners for broad international coverage
Ideal Partner: Midmarket-focused solution provider
Product Line: LiveAction QoS Module tool is for QoS monitoring and configuration
Featured Product (pictured): Live Action
Channel Recruitment Goal: 50 partners or fewer for broad national coverage
Ideal Partner: Enterprise-focused solution provider
Product Line: An open and interoperable AJAX framework for building and running rich Internet applications.
Featured Product (pictured): Turbo Enterprise Web 2.0
Channel Recruitment Goal: 50 partners or fewer for broad national U.S. coverage
Ideal Partner: Enterprise-focused solution provider
Product Line: Gaviri Universal Search Operating System runs across all storage devices, computer networks, the Web and all operating systems
Featured Product (pictured): Gaviri PocketSearch
Channel Recruitment Goal: 51 to 250 partners for broad national U.S. coverage
Ideal Partner: All
Product Line: A network of secure online workspaces that use social networking principles
Featured Product (pictured): Huddle.net
Channel Recruitment Goal: 51 to 250 partners for broad international coverage
Ideal Partner: SMB-focused solution provider
Product Line: A Web application monitoring solution that gives visibility into application performance as experienced by real end users.
Featured Product (pictured): TrueVision Express
Channel Recruitment Goal: 50 partners or fewer for limited international coverage
Ideal Partner: Enterprise-focused solution provider