10 Hot Emerging Vendors For April 2011

Ready For Primetime

Step right up and get what may very well be your first look at 10 hot new IT vendors that are exploding onto the scene. Each month, CRN profiles 10 new IT vendors that are looking to shake up the industry in various technology segments, from security to cloud computing, from software to hardware.

These tech startups know the importance of the channel and are looking to align with valued channel partners to get their names and products out.

Take a look and get introduced to 10 vendors that are ready for prime time.

Tintri

Company: Tintri
Tech Sector: Storage
Key Product: Tintri VMstore

The Lowdown: Kieran Harty, Tintri's co-founder and CEO, wants to cut the cost of attaching storage to virtualized server environments. That's a challenge few understand better than Harty, who prior to founding Mountain View, Calif.-based Tintri was responsible for all desktop and server R&D at VMware from 1999 to 2006.

Tintri builds appliances which handle hundreds of VMware VMs and their storage in a single device which to a server looks like a direct-attached storage array. They include 1 TB of Flash memory and 16, 1-TB SATA hard drives with built-in compression and deduplication and an administration console which hides the complexity of attaching VMs to storage.

Tintri, founded in 2008, has so far received $17 million in Series A and Series B venture funding.

Big Switch Networks

Company Name: Big Switch Networks
Tech Sector: Networking
Key Product: N/A

The Lowdown: Big Switch Networks is based in Palo Alto, Calif., and that's about all the public information that's available about this startup, which is still in stealth mode. One thing we do know is that Big Switch Networks is working on products based on the OpenFlow switching protocol, which is designed to allow for more sophisticated packet routing. Big Switch networks scored $13.8 million in venture capital funding last month, and it's led by former Stanford professor Guido Appenzeller.

Big Switch Networks hasn't launched yet, and its Web site contains the message "a big switch is (almost) here," but this looks like a company that's looking to shake things up in the networking space, which is itself already in the midst of some pretty significant winds of change as Cisco and HP continue to try and eat each other's lunch.

Custora

Company Name: Custora
Tech Sector: Software-as-a-Service Application
Key Product: Custora

The Lowdown: Custora offers on-demand e-marketing and predictive analysis applications that businesses use to identify customers and keep them engaged. The applications help improve customer retention by analyzing transaction patterns to figure out how customers behave and predict their buying behavior as much as two years out -- what Custora calls "customer lifetime value."

The system can help, say, an online retailer re-engage with a customer that's been idle using targeted promotions. It can also help e-tailers and subscription services allocate ad spending. Custora, founded in 2010 and appearing live in late February, touts itself as a low-cost alternative to expensive e-marketing and predictive analysis apps. Backed by startup funder Y Combinator, Custora has already lined up about a dozen customers including Foodzie, GetSatisfaction, Kobo and Scribd.

Fordela

Company Name: Fordela
Tech Sector: Cloud Media Management Services
Key Product: Fordela Media Platform

The Lowdown: Founded in 2006, Fordela is a San Francisco-based company that was started by former video content developers at George Lucas' LucasArts multimedia publishing firm. Fordela offers media management and delivery as a cloud service. The Fordela Media Platform offers secure content management and distribution to any Internet-connected devices and can be offered as an end-to-end solution or as modules that can be integrated into the client's workflow.

Spanning Cloud Apps

Company Name: Spanning Cloud Apps
Tech Sector: Cloud Computing
Key Product: Spanning Backup for Google Apps

The Lowdown: Austin, Texas-based Spanning Cloud Apps wants to help Google Apps partners and admins sleep a little better at night. The company, which launched in 2010 as a spinoff of Spanning Sync Inc., makes Spanning Backup for Google Apps, a security and compliance app available in the Google Apps Marketplace. Spanning Backup does just what the name says: It continually backs up Google Apps data to the cloud. Spanning Backup offers backup and restore functionality for Google Apps users and admins and provides always-on protection against accidental and malicious data loss or corruption.

Spanning Cloud Apps isn't stopping at Google Apps, its goal is to increase development of complimentary solutions for other major cloud service providers as well. And a recent $2 million in funding from Boulder-based venture capital firm Foundry Group will help it do so.

CertiVox

Company Name: CertiVox
Tech Sector: Security
Key Product: CertiVox Key Management Infrastructure-as-a-Service

The Lowdown: CertiVox, which opened its doors in San Francisco and the U.K. in 2009, is taking key management to the cloud. The company bills itself as the first IaaS company to provide on-demand encryption key generation, management and distribution for the cloud. CertiVox says its key distribution technology takes away the complexity and security issues associated with encryption key management. Its technology is in use in a host of different verticals for secure e-mail and transferred files, and is designed to prevent data leaks, implement digital rights management and gain audit controls over secure information exchanges. Recently CertiVox raised more than $1.4 million in Series A funding from Pentech Ventures and Octopus Investments -- funds to be used to develop and bring to market its key management IaaS.

TalkPoint

Company Name: TalkPoint
Tech Sector: Networking/SaaS
Key Product: TalkPoint Webcasting and Virtual Meeting Platform

While founded in 2000, TalkPoint of late has been aggressively promoting its SaaS-based audio- and video-Webcasting capabilities to enterprise-focused channel partners as a white label offering for markets like financial services, health care and manufacturing. The New York company's TalkPoint Webcasting and Virtual Meeting Platform -- often seen in its role as part of Cisco's WebEx platform -- is part of an emerging class of SaaS-based collaboration and conferencing solutions that can scale flexibly and are completely Web-browser based, meaning presenters and participants don't require additional software downloads or plug-ins to make them work.

AccelOps

Company Name: AccelOps
Tech Sector: Software/Services
Key Product: AccelOps Platform

The Lowdown: Founded in 2007, AccelOps offers integrated data center and cloud service monitoring software. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company's services and platform are delivered as scalable virtual appliance software or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). The AccelOps platform cross-correlates and manages diverse operational data on-premise, off-premise and in cloud environments.

Zencoder

Company Name: Zencoder
Tech Sector: Video/SaaS
Key Product: Zencoder Cloud-Based Video Encoding

The Lowdown: Launched in 2010, Zencoder seeks to solve the most complex part of video publishing: transcoding. The cloud-based video encoding service, Zencoder lets users covert videos from Web sites, applications or video libraries into formats that are compatible with Web playback, mobile phone or other devices. As the company is quick to point out, every video published anywhere needs to be transcoded. Zencoder's products help content providers quickly deploy internet video that runs on any Internet-ready device. Zencoder is an API-based online video encoding service.

Earlier this month, San Francisco-based Zencoder snagged $2 million in finding that it will use to continue its growth.

Sparkpad

Company Name: Sparkpad
Tech Sector: Mobile Software/Mobile Touch Screens
Key Product: Sparkpad Platform

The Lowdown: Competition in the touch screen tablet space is pretty stiff these days, but Sparkpad has a trick up its sleeve to differentiate its products from the likes of the Apple iPad and other devices. Sparkpad, a startup based in Sterling, Va., has released a software platform that allows anyone -- users, software developers, solution providers or hardware manufacturers -- to create their own customized touch screen devices such as tablets, digital signage, and embedded systems. Along with its easy-to-use software development platform, Sparkpad also offers accompanying hardware such as bare bones 8-inch and 10-inch tablets and a 15-inch display.