Platform9

CEO: Sirish Raghuram

Platform9, a startup co-founded by former VMware engineers, came out of stealth mode in August with a cloud-based management platform that lets companies run their private clouds with the automation and efficiency of public clouds.

During their time at VMware, the Platform9 team worked on vCloud Director, a cloud management platform that makes virtual resources available to users through a self-service catalog.

That product has seen slow adoption, and the Platform9 team believes their approach is better. Whether customers agree remains to be seen, but this startup has big ideas and isn't afraid to challenge the status quo.