2019 Software-Defined Data Center 50: Hot SDDC Vendors To Watch
CRN breaks down the 50 vendors who are leading the software-defined data center evolution.
The 50 Software-Defined Data Center Providers Who Are Leading The Pack
The modern data center is becoming software-defined, virtualized and delivered as-a-service at a rapid pace.
Data center infrastructure titans like Dell Technologies and Hewlett Packard Enterprise as well as software startups such as Apstra and Wasabi Technologies are viciously innovating data centers through automation, artificial intelligence (AI) and new pricing models in order to make on-premise solutions as easy to buy, operate and manage as the public cloud.
As the commoditization of network, storage and server continues, vendors are creating software-centric data center solutions more than ever before. Markets like hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) are exploding through the need to consolidate data center hardware wrapped in easy to manage and monitor software.
The rise of edge, hybrid cloud and micro-data centers is forcing vendors to rethink their strategy about how they sell and create new data center solutions. Here is CRN’s list of the 50 vendors who are leading this software-defined data center evolution.
By Company:
APC By Schneider Electric
Jean-Pascal Tricoire, Chairman, CEO
Headquarters: West Kingston, R.I.
APC by Schneider Electric has taken a deep dive into software-defined with its EcoStruxure IT portfolio, which provides a slew of monitoring and management solutions. The company is pushing its channel partners to drive data center software and services sales by offering new certifications.
Apstra
Mansour Karam, CEO, Founder
Headquarters: Menlo Park, Calif.
The intent-based networking pioneer recently unveiled its latest Apstra Operating Systems (AOS) 3.0 with new group-based policy automation and advanced VMware vSphere integration. AOS automates data center operations across the network regardless of customers’ vendor mix and can collect data from any switch or server.
Arista Networks
Jayshree Ullal, President, CEO
Headquarters: Santa Clara, Calif.
To make way for 5G, Arista Networks is creating new platforms that support 100G and 400G networks designed for large-scale virtualized and cloud networking. The data center specialist has shipped more than 20 million ports through its flagship Extensible Operating System (EOS) and CloudVision software.
Avi Networks
Amit Pandey, CEO
Headquarters: Santa Clara, Calif.
Avi Networks has more than doubled its revenue and customers each year for the past three years. Its flagship Avi Vantage Platform provides a software load balancer, intelligent web application firewall and a universal service mesh to ensure fast, scalable and secure application experiences.
Big Switch Networks
Douglas Murray, CEO
Headquarters: Santa Clara, Calif.
Software-defined networking (SDN) specialist Big Switch Networks has been growing at a clip of more than 80 percent year over year since 2015. The company provides public cloud-like networking and hybrid cloud consistency through innovative software on open networking hardware for on-premise, public and multi-cloud environments.
CloudGenix
Kumar Ramachandran, CEO, Founder
Headquarters: San Jose, Calif.
The SD-WAN standout scored $65 million in funding this year in a move to deepen its U.S. market presence and increase channel investments. CloudGenix ION simplifies how WANs are designed and managed to achieve better performance and cut costs while extending security to the network edge.
Cisco
Chuck Robbins, Chairman, CEO
Headquarters: San Jose
The $50 billion network giant remains the dominant global leader in data center networking, selling a wide range of hardware infrastructure, software-defined storage, analytics, automation and a large variety of services worldwide. Cisco is also a major player in hyper-convergence, SD-WAN, security and intent-based networking.
Citrix Systems
David Henshall, President, CEO
Headquarters: Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
The global software star offers cloud computing, Software as-a-Service (SaaS), server virtualization, SD-WAN and application solutions to data centers and 99 percent of Fortune 100 companies. Citrix Systems application delivery solution, Citrix ADC, provides a high-quality experience regardless of where the app is hosted.
Cumulus Networks
John Leslie, CEO
Headquarters: Mountain View, Calif.
The Cumulus Linux open network operating system allows data centers to automate, customize and scale using web-scale principles without the need for specialized hardware. Cumulus’ recently launched a new version of its highly-scalable network operations toolset, NetQ 2.0, with closed-loop automation and full lifecycle management.
Dell Technologies
Michael Dell, Chairman, CEO
Headquarters: Round Rock, Texas
The $91 billion infrastructure behemoth is the worldwide leader in server, storage and hyper-converged infrastructure. Dell Technologies is doubling down this year on unifying and innovating across its family of businesses -- which include Boomi, Dell EMC, Pivotal Software, RSA, SecureWorks, Virtustream and VMware -- for end-to-end data center solutions and services.
DataDirect Networks
Alex Bouzari, Chairman, CEO, Co-Founder
Headquarters: Chatsworth, Calif.
In May, DataDirect Networks (DDN) acquired software-defined storage specialist Nexenta in a move build 5G infrastructure’s software foundation. DDN will combine its high-performance computing and all-flash storage portfolio with Nexenta’s storage software that is used by over 100 telcos worldwide.
Docker
Rob Bearden, CEO
Headquarters: San Francisco
Container market leader Docker provides an open-source platform that builds, manages and secures applications from development to production for on-premise data centers and in the cloud. In May, Docker announced former Hortonworks CEO Rob Bearden as the company’s new CEO.
DriveNets
Ido Susan, CEO, Co-Founder
Headquarters: Israel
Networking software startup DriveNets launched out of stealth this year with $110 million in funding with the goal to simplify and scale the rollout of 5G. DriveNets’ Network Cloud software-based disaggregated router has 400G support that runs the routing data plane on white-boxes and the control plane on standard servers.
Excelero Storage
Lior Gal, CEO, Co-Founder
Headquarters: London
The startup is looking to disrupt the software-defined block storage market by delivering low-latency distributed block storage for web-scale applications like AI and GPU computing. Excelero’s NVMesh enables shared NVMe across any network and supports any local or distributed file system.
Extreme Networks
Ed Meyercord, President, CEO
Headquarters: San Jose, Calif.
Extreme Networks is rolling out Extreme Elements that brings together pieces of its Smart OmniEdge, Automated Campus and Agile Data Center portfolios that can be mixed and matched to build autonomous networks. Extreme’s new AI-infused ExtreameAI Security application aims to remediate threats against IoT devices.
FalconStor
Todd Brooks, CEO
Headquarters: Melville, N.Y.
The FalconStor Data Mastery Platform is a vendor agnostic data protection platform for comprehensive on-premise, cloud storage and data management. Design for the full spectrum of data management use cases, FalconStor’s platform was validated for AWS this year.
Hammerspace
David Flynn, CEO
Headquarters: Los Altos, Calif.
Available on the Google Cloud Platform Marketplace, the Hammerspace Data-as-a-Service platform delivers, manages and protects unstructured data across hybrid clouds. Hammerspace is a storage and protocol agnostic cloud data control plane that abstracts data from the infrastructure for self-service management in any cloud or data center.
Hedvig
Avinash Lakshman, CEO
Headquarters: Santa Clara, Calif.
The software-defined storage specialist’s Distributed Storage Platform offers flexibility for hybrid-cloud environments where automation is key. Hedvig provides a single pane of glass that streamlines management of data across multiple data centers and clouds, while also offering an always-on data fabric for VMs, containers and backups.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Antonio Neri, President, CEO, Founder
Headquarters: San Jose, Calif.
HPE has one of the broadest data center infrastructure portfolio in the world from servers, storage and software-defined networking to data analytics and IoT. The company is looking to gain share in the hyper-converged market through a new partnership with Nutanix and its HPE GreenLake consumption-based offering.
Hitachi Vantara
Ryuichi Otsuki, CEO
Headquarters: Santa Clara, Calif.
Hitachi Vantara aims to bring cost-effective digital transformation to customers with its wide IoT, cloud, application, big data and analytics set of solutions. Hitachi’s Smart Data Center delivers predictive analytics to automate and improve operational efficiency and cloud computing services on- or off-premises.
Huawei
Ren Zhengfei, CEO, Founder
Headquarters: Shenzhen, China
Asia communications and technology powerhouse Huawei is a leader in designing and building cloud computing data centers with end-to-end solutions including software-defined networking, servers, storage, backup, disaster recovery and converged infrastructure as well as its new AI-native database GaussDB.
HyperQube Technologies
Craig Stevenson, CEO, Founder
Headquarters: Washington, DC
Startup HyperQube Technologies enables enterprises to easily build an exact copy of any data center infrastructure or network to determine how the environment responds to changes caused by software updates, new technologies, and unplanned events such as outages or cyberattacks.
IBM
Ginni Rometty, Chairman, President, CEO
Headquarters: Armonk, N.Y.
IBM’s pending $34 billion acquisition of open-source leader Red Hat is a potential data center market disruptor. IBM has a massive product portfolio full of bare metal servers, virtual servers, data analytics, network appliances, management software, storage, and security along with its AI-based Watson offerings.
Juniper Networks
Rami Rahim, CEO
Headquarters: Sunnyvale, Calif.
The longtime networking player recently unveiled its first cloud-based SD-WAN offering with Contrail SD-WAN. Juniper is striving to grow its presence in the cloud-managed network space as seen in its $405 million acquisition of AI-powered networking startup Mist Systems in April.
Lenovo
Yang Yuanqing, Chairman, CEO
Headquarters: Morrisville, N.C.
Lenovo’s Data Center Group revamped its product portfolio and channel charge in 2019, aiming to become a bigger software-defined market force. TruScale Infrastructure Services is the company’s new consumption-based IaaS offering that allows customers to use and pay for on-premises data center solutions without having to purchase the equipment.
LogicMonitor
Kevin McGibben, President, CEO
Headquarters: Santa Barbara, Calif.
LogicMonitor offers an innovative SaaS-based performance monitoring and analytics platform, which recently became available on the AWS Marketplace, can support more than 1,200 technologies through a single pane of glass. The company launched its first-ever LogicMonitor Partner Program this year for hybrid IT monitoring.
Microsoft
Satya Nadella, CEO
Headquarters: Redmond, Wash.
The software and public cloud giant is pushing towards software-defined data centers through compute virtualization and SDN solutions as well as cloud infrastructure and management services. Microsoft is building new data centers at a rapid pace while also creating new cloud alliances with the likes of VMware.
NetApp
George Kurian, President, CEO
Headquarters: Sunnyvale, Calif.
The all-flash storage specialist owns a solid data center portfolio of converged infrastructure, storage software, automation, management and data backup and recovery offerings. The company’s NetApp Services arm helps customers plan, build and deploy cost-efficient software-defined data centers.
Nutanix
Dheeraj Pandey, CEO, Founder
Headquarters: San Jose, Calif.
The software innovation engineer is roaring at Nutanix this year with new and enhancements SaaS offers like Nutanix Mine, Xi Leap and Xi Beam. Nutanix is currently the No. 2 market leader in HCI, expecting a new partnership with HPE will help gain more hyper-converged market share.
Nuage Networks
Sunil Khandekar, CEO, Founder
Headquarters: Mountain View, Calif.
The software-defined networking specialist delvers policy-based automation across the network to optimize data center, cloud or SD-WAN operations in a single platform. Nuage Networks provides a variety of virtualized services for security analytics, networking and cloud.
Nyansa
Abe Ankumah, CEO, Co-Founder
Headquarters: Palo Alto, Calif.
Nyansa provides a full-stack network analytics solution that analyzes, resolves and optimizes the customer experience for all devices from access to applications. Voyance by Nyasa is a comprehensive user performance management and network assurance platform that correlates data across every layer of the network.
128 Technology
Andy Ory, CEO, Co-Founder
Headquarters: Burlington, Mass.
An innovator in simplified routing, networking software startup 128 Technology has expanded into the SD-WAN market. The company’s 128T Networking Platform provides secure routing to simplify network architecture while providing a single control and a data plane that supports a wide range of applications and use cases.
Oracle
Safra Catz, Mark Hurd, Co-CEOs
Headquarters: Redwood City, Calif.
Oracle offers a slew of cloud applications and platform services as well as IaaS SLA’s that covers performance and management for data centers. Oracle Cloud delivers integrated cloud services and solutions enabling customers to build, deploy and manage workloads on-premise or in the cloud.
Pivot3
Ron Nash, President, CEO
Headquarters: Austin, Texas
HCI specialist Pivot3 builds intelligent and automated hyper-converged solutions to support any workload, data center initiative or IT environment. Pivot3’s Acuity Datacenter Series is architected for performance, scale and simplicity with NVMe flash and policy-based intelligence to support multiple application workloads.
Platform9
Sirish Raghuram, CEO, Co-Founder
Headquarters: Sunnyvale, Calif.
Platform9 manages hybrid cloud infrastructure with its SaaS-based managed OpenStack and Kubernetes cloud solutions. Built on open source frameworks and continuous management technology, Platform9 provides a powerful hybrid cloud management solution that works right out of the box.
Pluribus Networks
Kumar Srikantan, President, CEO
Headquarters: Santa Clara, Calif.
Pluribus delivers network monitoring and SDN fabric solutions for enhanced insight, agility and security to data center infrastructure. The Pluribus Networks Adaptive Cloud Fabric delivers a controllerless SDN fabric that provides a virtual extensible LAN overlay to simplify networking for distributed clouds.
Portworx
Murli Thirumale, CEO, Co-Founder
Headquarters: Los Altos, Calif.
The storage specialist brings multi-cloud data management tools like data security, data migrations and disaster recovery (DR) into the heart of Kubernetes. Portworx integrates with Kubernetes to provide a cloud native solution to business continuity and DR with its PX-DR that enables complete failover protection.
Red Hat
James Whitehurst, President, CEO
Headquarters: Raleigh, N.C.
A leader in open source solutions for Linux, containers and Kubernetes technologies, Red Hat also provides a variety of software-defined storage solutions. More than 1,000 customers are now using the Red Hat OpenShift Container hybrid cloud platform to enable fast development and deployment of new applications.
Riverbed
Paul Mountford, CEO
Headquarters: San Francisco
Riverbed has been doubling down on SD-WAN and application performance acceleration capabilities. Riverbed’s Digital Performance Platform includes a combination of management and infrastructure solutions that ensures top notch user experiences by focusing on operational agility and accelerated business outcomes.
Scale Computing
Jeff Ready, CEO
Headquarters: Indianapolis, Ind.
Scale Computing’s HC3 platform automatically identifies, mitigates and corrects problems in the infrastructure in real-time. The hyper-converged infrastructure specialist is an emerging leader in edge computing with solutions aimed at transforming isolated data centers into unified, self-managing micro-data centers at the edge.
Silver Peak
David Hughes, Chairman, CEO
Headquarters: Santa Clara, Calif.
Silver Peak is a longtime SD-WAN innovator who differentiates itself by integrating WAN optimization, firewalls, routing and application visibility in a unified SD-WAN platform. The company is currently conducting a large partner recruitment campaign to onboard new solution providers in order to drive SD-WAN sales.
Stateless
Murad Kablan, CEO, Co-Founder
Headquarters: Boulder, Colo.
The startup’s flagship Stateless Luxon solution allows customers to quickly deploy new routing, security and automation capabilities to existing network assets. The multi-tenant offering consolidates all network infrastructure into a single platform and integrates security across data centers to create an interconnective fabric without an MPLS network needed.
Stratoscale
Ariel Maislos, CEO
Headquarters: Israel
Stratoscale delivers a software-defined data center platform that enables IaaS, database as-a-Service and containers as-a-Service in data center and edge locations. The company’s new Stratoscale V5 aims to break down the separation of enterprise environments and the public cloud by applying a cloud-native paradigm across all environments.
Talari Networks
Patrick Sweeney, Chairman, CEO
Headquarters: San Jose, Calif.
Pure-play SD-WAN specialist Talari Networks creates a smart and responsive network that adapts in real-time to bandwidth demand and network conditions, allowing applications to take the best quality path through the network. The company became part of Oracle in late 2018.
TidalScale
Gary Smerdon, President, CEO
Headquarters: Campbell, Calif.
The software-defined server startup captured more than $50 million in funding last year by offering flexibility to data centers by right-sizing servers to fit any data set or workload. TidalScale delivers in-memory performance at any scale, uses standard hardware and is compatible with all operating systems and applications.
Veeam
Andrei Baronov, CEO, Co-Founder
Headquarters: Switzerland
Now surpassing $1 billion in annual bookings, Veeam is a leader in backup, disaster recovery and data management. Veeam received a massive $500 million in funding this year and has formed a slew of partnerships with market leaders and startups alike to expand its market reach.
Versa Networks
Kelly Ahuja, CEO
Headquarters: San Jose, Calif.
The company’s new Versa Titan is a cloud managed SD-WAN branch and security solution that simplifies customers ability to design, deploy and operate network infrastructure. Versa Networks’ Secure Cloud IP software platform delivers integrated cloud, networking and security services.
Vexata
Zahid Hussain, CEO, Founder
Headquarters: San Jose, Calif.
Vexata’s Scalable NVMe Flash Storage provides predictive analytics and autonomous decisions to power AI and machine learning applications. Its VX-Cloud Data Acceleration Platform aims to transform industry standard servers into hyper-scale data platforms that allow data to be provisioned across multiple consolidate applications.
VMware
Pat Gelsinger, CEO
Headquarters: Palo Alto, Calif.
Virtualization superstar VMware is becoming a significant hybrid cloud player through strategic partnerships with the likes of AWS and Microsoft. The $9 billion company has a vast portfolio of software-defined data center solutions from SD-WAN and server virtualization to management and HCI software.
Wasabi Technologies
David Friend, CEO, Co-Founder
Headquarters: Boston
Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage provides enterprise class storage for one-fifth the price of cloud vendors and up to six-times faster with no fees for data egress or API request. The cloud storage-as-a-service startup, created by the founders of Carbonite, recently launched its Wasabi Partner Network program.