2012 CRN Data Center 100: Part 2

The Data Center 100

Large or small, a data center requires a wide range of building blocks, brought together from a huge list of potential vendor options. Here's the second part of our list, which includes of some of the key technology players that solution providers and their customers need to be aware of. The following represents a cross-section of the data center provider community, with representatives from as many different parts of the industry as possible.

For more of our list, check out part one of CRN's Data Center 100.

Mellanox Technologies

Sunnyvale, Calif.
Eyal Waldman
Chairman, CEO

Mellanox develops end-to-end interconnect solutions for servers and storage for optimizing data center performance. Products include FDR 56Gb/s InfiniBand and 10/40-Gigabit Ethernet adapters, switches, cables and software.

Microsoft

Redmond, Wash.
Steve Ballmer
CEO

Microsoft is a critical part of nearly every data center with technology ranging from its ubiquitous Windows OSes installed on the majority of servers and PCs to its Hyper-V virtualization technology to its developer tools and software applications.

Mitel

Kanata, Ontario
Rich McBee
President, CEO

Mitel develops communications solutions from basic business to UC, and from prepackaged to tailored applications that can be purchased outright or as a managed service. Included are phone, communications software, conferencing and more.

NEC Corporation of America

Irving, Texas
Takayuki Okada
President, CEO

NEC provides a wide range of enterprise and data center IT products and services including servers, storage, networking and communications, along with security software. IT also provides software and services for communications, biometrics and BI.

NetApp

Sunnyvale, Calif.
Tom Georgens
President, CEO

NetApp, a leading vendor of unified storage, in 2011 expanded its OEM business by acquiring Engenio and unveiling the channel-only FlexPod reference architecture to help customers transition to the cloud. It also refreshed its entry-level portfolio.

Nexsan Technologies

Woodland Hills, Calif.
Philip Black
CEO

Nexsan was a pioneer in the development of low-cost, large-capacity storage systems. The company now offers SAN and SSD-powered NAS storage systems built for virtual server storage, backup, archiving and video storage.

Novell

Provo, Utah
Bob Flynn
President, GM

Novell in 2011 sold its Linux patent portfolio and related technology and now focuses on enterprise data center applications including its GroupWise collaboration software, an endpoint management and security line, and file and networking services.

OCZ Technology

San Jose, Calif.
Ryan Peterson
President, CEO

OCZ manufactures and distributes SSDs, PCIe Flash accelerators and Flash media, as well as high-performance components for computing devices and systems, including enterprise-class power management products and industrial power accessories.

Oracle

Redwood Shores, Calif.
Larry Ellison
CEO

Oracle, a major database, middleware and application software provider, in 2011 sought to extend its data center presence with integrated hardware and software systems such as the Exadata database server and Exalogic Elastic Cloud server.

Palo Alto Networks

Santa Clara, Calif.
Mark McLaughlin
President, CEO

Palo Alto Networks is a developer of network security technology. Its firewalls enable visibility and granular policy control of applications and content by user and IP address at up to 20 Gbps with no performance degradation.

Pano Logic

Redwood City, Calif.
John Kish
President, CEO

Pano Logic produces zero-client devices for virtual desktop environments. Offerings include the Pano Device, a desktop virtualization device with no CPU, memory, OS, drivers, software or moving parts; Web-based management software and more.

Peak 10

Charlotte, N.C.
David Jones
President, CEO

Peak 10 offers data center and managed services via data centers in 10 Southeast cities. Data center services include colocation and enterprise hosting; managed services include application support, storage backup and recovery; and more.

Pelco by Schneider Electric

Clovis, Calif.
Herve Fages
VP, Global Product Mktg.

The company produces video surveillance solutions including camera domes and enclosures, megapixel IP and HD cameras, video matrix systems, digital video recorders, software-only video management solutions, and fiber optic transmission systems.

Promise Technologies

Milpitas, Calif.
James Lee
President, CEO

Promise develops RAID storage arrays for small businesses to enterprises. For enterprise data centers, it offers its VTrak E-class arrays ranging from SAS-based JBOD (non-RAID) solutions to Fibre Channel RAID arrays for SAN-based storage.

Qlogic

Aliso Viejo, Calif.
Simon Biddiscombe
President, CEO

QLogic offers a diverse portfolio of networking products, including Ethernet adapters; Converged Network Adapters for the Fibre Channel over Ethernet market; Fibre Channel adapters and switches; iSCSI adapters; and intelligent storage routers.

Quantum

San Jose, Calif.
Jon Gacek
President, CEO

Quantum specializes in data protection and Big Data management. Its lineup includes disk-based deduplication systems for backup and restore, tape automation products for disaster recovery and data retention, data management software and more.

Quest Software

Aliso Viejo, Calif.
Douglas Garn
President, CEO

Quest provides software and services for managing physical, virtual and cloud IT environments. Its portfolio includes software to monitor and manage ERP and Web-based applications, database development and administration tools, and more.

Rackspace

San Antonio
Lanham Napier
CEO

Rackspace delivers enterprise-level hosting services to businesses of all sizes in three flavors: managed hosting or dedicated servers, business-class e-mail and application hosting, and on-demand scalable cloud hosting with managed service levels.

Raritan

Somerset, N.J.
Ching-I Hsu
Chairman, CEO

Raritan manages power efficiency and capacity and tracks IT assets. Its tools automate monitoring and management of almost every device in the data center in physical and virtualized environments across a LAN, WAN or the Internet.

Red Hat

Raleigh, N.C.
Jim Whitehurst
President, CEO

Red Hat provides the IT industry's most recognized open-source OS, Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The company also develops cloud, virtualization, storage and SOA solutions, including Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and JBoss Enterprise Middleware.

RES Software

Plymouth Meeting, Pa.
Klaus Besier
CEO

RES Software provides technology to help data centers manage and deliver secure, compliant desktops independent of the underlying computing infrastructure—thin clients, virtual desktops, physical desktops or server-based computing environments.

Riverbed Technology

San Francisco
Jerry M. Kennelly
Chairman, CEO

Riverbed is a leader in WAN optimization technology for increasing application and data performance across a WAN. Last year, it added VMware vSphere Replication capability to its Steelhead WAN appliances.

Samsung Semiconductor

San Jose, Calif.
Jim Elliott
VP, Memory Marketing

Samsung Semiconductor, a wholly owned subsidiary of Samsung Electronics, is the largest producer of ultra-low-power DDR3 memory and high-performance SSDs for virtualized data centers, clients and cloud computing networks.

SAP America

Newtown Square, Penn.
Robert Courteau
President, SAP NA

SAP offers enterprise data center applications including solutions for analytics and BI, mobile platforms, enterprise information management solutions, and a business suite that includes CRM, ERP, supply chain management and more.

Seagate

Scotts Valley, Calif.
Stephen Luczo
Chairman, President, CEO

Seagate produces hard disk drives; solid-state hybrid drives; SSDs and storage solutions, including drives for enterprise servers and storage arrays; and drives for desktop PCs, laptops and CE devices. Seagate just acquired Samsung’s hard drive business.

Server Technology

Reno, Nev.
Brandon Ewing
President

Server Technology designs and manufactures intelligent rack-based power distribution products for enterprise data centers, telecommunications operations and branch office locations. Server Technology invented the intelligent power distribution unit.

SGI

Fremont, Calif.
Mark Barrenechea
President, CEO

SGI offers high-performance technical computing systems that companies and research organizations use to address tough computing challenges. SGI delivers a full suite of storage, servers, data center and open software products.

Silver Peak

Santa Clara, Calif.
Rick Tinsley
President, CEO

Silver Peak develops WAN optimization tools that mitigate latency, improve network quality and reduce traffic sent across a WAN. The company provides high-capacity virtual (1-Gbps) and physical (2.5-Gbps) WAN optimization appliances.

SonicWall

San Jose, Calif.
Matt Medeiros
President, CEO

SonicWall provides network security, secure remote access, Web and e-mail security, backup and recovery, and policy and management solutions for dynamically securing, controlling and scaling customers’ global networks.

Sophos

Burlington, Mass.
Steve Munford
CEO

Sophos offers endpoint, encryption, Web, mobile, unified threat management, network access control and e-mail security software solutions that help data centers protect customers and users from malware and meet compliance requirements.

STEC

Santa Ana, Calif.
Manouch Moshayedi
Chairman, CEO

STEC provides enterprise SSD technologies and PCIe solid-state accelerators, which help accelerate access to data in sophisticated storage arrays and provide application acceleration and optimized virtualization in server deployments.

StillSecure

Superior, Colo.
Rajat Bhargava
Chairman, CEO

StillSecure helps control who connects to a network by making sure connected devices pose no danger and are compliant with security policies. Products include network access control software, intrusion detection and prevention, and more.

Stratus Technologies

Maynard, Mass.
David Laurello
Chairman, President, CEO

Stratus sells software, hardware and remote monitoring and management services that provide uptime assurance for business and mission-critical applications. Stratus software creates a high-availability computing platform from standard x86 servers.

Super Micro Computer

San Jose, Calif.
Charles Liang
Chairman, President, CEO

Super Micro develops and manufactures rack-mount, pedestal and blade servers, high-end workstations and storage appliances based on industry-standard components. It also supplies chasses and motherboards to server and storage system builders.

Symantec

Mountain View, Calif.
Enrique Salem
President, CEO

Symantec wears two big hats. It is a top developer of security technology, and identity and user authentication products for risk management and compliance, and is the largest independent developer of data protection, disaster recovery software.

Syncsort

Woodcliff Lake, N.J.
Flavio Santoni
CEO

Syncsort helps accelerate data protection in virtual environments while cutting the backup footprint and providing immediate access to data during the recovery process. It also helps cut performance bottlenecks in existing data integration platforms.

Talari Networks

San Jose, Calif.
Emerick Woods
President, CEO

Talari's Mercury line of adaptive private networking solutions provides WAN virtualization capabilities and connects to existing networks without the need for ’forklift upgrades’ to increase bandwidth and reliability, and reduces WAN operating expenses.

Toshiba America Electronic Comp.

San Jose, Calif.
Stan Lerch
VP, OEM/Channel Sales

Toshiba offers a full line of enterprise-class hard disk drives, solid state drives and NAND Flash technology. Toshiba, which invented NAND technology, became the world's third-largest drive maker after industry consolidations in 2011.

Trend Micro

Cupertino, Calif.
Eva Chen
CEO

Trend Micro offers content security and data protection for endpoints, mobile, Web/messaging gateways and networks. The Trend Micro Smart Protection Network powers physical, virtual and cloud security product offerings.

Unidesk

Marlborough, Mass.
Don Bulens
President, CEO

Unidesk helps customers centralize desktops on data center servers and realize the full potential of VDI. Its patent-pending desktop-layering technology integrates with VDI-brokering solutions such as VMware View and Citrix XenDesktop.

Veeam Software

Columbus, Ohio
Ratmir Timashev
President, CEO

Veeam offers software to manage virtualized environments including Veeam Backup & Replication, Veeam Reporter, Veeam Monitor and Veeam Business View. Veeam works in VMware environments and will also support Hyper-V going forward.

Virtual Computer

Westford, Mass.
Dan McCall
President, CEO

Virtual Computer develops NxTop, an intelligent desktop virtualization suite that combines client-hosted VDI with centralized management to enable businesses to manage thousands of desktops as easily as managing one.

VM6 Software

Montreal
Claude Goudreault
CEO

VM6 offers MSPs a private cloud platform to help them migrate from a regular managed services environment to a highly scalable cloud. Its VM6mcp cloud platform helps create a distributed on-premise client cloud or a multitenant hosted cloud.

VMware

Palo Alto, Calif.
Paul Maritz
CEO

VMware is the primary vendor of solutions for building virtualized server and cloud infrastructure environments. It is a leader in developing technology to help customers use their virtualized environments for application development.

WatchGuard Technologies

Seattle
Joe Wang
CEO

WatchGuard's Extensible Threat Management network security solutions combine firewall, VPN and security services, while its Extensible Content Security appliances offer content security across e-mail and Web.

Websense

San Diego
Gene Hodges
CEO

Websense provides Web, data and e-mail content security, as well as a unified offering covering all three via its Websense Triton solution. Websense Triton can be deployed on-premise, in the cloud or as a hybrid of both.

Western Digital

Irvine, Calif.
John Coyne
President, CEO

Western Digital is one of the three top producers of hard drives and has drives for desktop, mobile, enterprise and audiovideo. It also entered the SSD market and is currently acquiring rival Hitachi GST.

Wyse Technology

San Jose, Calif.
Tarkan Maner
Pres., CEO, Chief Cust. Advct.

Wyse focuses on what it calls "cloud client computing" with a portfolio that includes thin client, zero client and cloud PC client solutions. It also offers desktop virtualization and cloud software to support desktops, laptops and next-gen mobile devices.

XIO (formerly, Xiotech)

Colorado Springs, Colo.
John Beletic
President, CEO

XIO develops storage devices based on its Hyper ISE technology. Hyper ISE devices come prebuilt with 20 2.5-inch SAS hard drives and 2.5-inch SSDs, which combined provide 14.4 TBs of storage and up to 200,000 IOPS.

Xsigo Systems

San Jose, Calif.
Lloyd Carney
CEO

Xsigo's I/O Director is a hardware/software solution for dynamically connecting any server to any Ethernet or Fibre Channel network. Customers can change connectivity on-demand, with up to 64 isolated connections per server via a single cable.



For more of our list, check out part one of CRN's Data Center 100.