10 Hot Emerging Vendors For June 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.

Aryaka

Company Name: Aryaka
Tech Sector: Networking
Key Product: Aryaka service

The Lowdown: Aryaka, which was founded in 2008, offers WAN optimization-as-a-service, claiming its cloud-based WAN op platform can deliver less than 20 millisecond latency for 90 percent of the world's users of business Internet. A hotshot startup whose executive team features a number of Akamai alumni, Aryaka uses various techniques, from proxy servers to redundancy removal, over its own private network to power its service. In May 2011, it completed a rollout of 25 points of presence throughout the world, and in June, confirmed a $15 million Series B financing round in hopes of keeping its momentum going. Founder and CEO Ajit Gupta recently told CRN that the WAN op market is moving away from hardware appliance-based solutions toward the as-a-service delivery model, and Aryaka wants to work with VARs, referral agents, IaaS providers and service providers to grow its footprint.

Adapteva

Company Name: Adapteva
Tech Sector: Components and peripherals
Key Product; Epiphany multi-core processor architecture

The Lowdown: Founded in 2008, Adapteva was created with a simple mission: develop the world's most energy efficient microprocessor architecture while also boosting the number of integrated cores in a single chip. The Lexington, Mass.-based company says its Epiphany architecture supports more than 1,000 general-purpose floating point processor cores and is extremely scalable. With its low power consumption design, Adapteva's technology aims to bring multi-core performance to smaller mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

Queplix

Company Name: Queplix
Tech Sector: Data Center
Key Product: Queplix Virtual Data Manager

The Lowdown: Founded in 2004, Queplix enables companies to securely integrate and manage cloud and on-premise applications and data. The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company is seeking to drive into the midmarket and to leverage the channel to do so, said CEO Mark Cashman.

The solution is available in on-premise and SaaS-based models, Cashman said. Potential VARs need to purchase a Queplix system for internal use and for demo use.

"Outside of that, there is traditional training. Why we are being selective right now is we are looking to identifying partners we want to work with. They should be comfortable with data virtualization but also with solving business problems. We're looking at VAR to attract as much business as possible," Cashman said.

Oxygen Cloud

Company Name: Oxygen Cloud
Tech Sector: Cloud Computing
Key Product: Oxygen Universal Cloud Drive

The Lowdown: Oxygen Cloud was founded in 2010 and charged itself with becoming a secure cloud storage play for teams. With its Universal Cloud Drive, Newark, Calif.-based Oxygen Cloud lets teams create shared storage spaces in the cloud that is synchronized across user devices whether they are Windows, Mac, iPhone or iPad. Oxygen Cloud essentially replaces network drives mapped to old file servers with its Universal Cloud Drive synchronizing access to shared files in the cloud from any location and any device. Oxygen's Universal Cloud Drive is integrated with the native file system and file manager. It also ties in access control, data encryption and storage management to ensure data is secured. Oxygen Cloud supports all cloud models, whether public, private or hybrid.

VMTurbo

Company Name: VMTurbo
Tech Sector: Virtualization
Key Product: Virtualization Management Suite

The Lowdown: VMTurbo started life in 2009 with the goal of making a killer app for managing virtualized data centers. In these environments, demand for physical resources -- compute, storage and networking -- is constantly in flux, which makes it tough for organizations to wring the ROI out of virtualization technology. With monitoring, analytics and reporting, VMTurbo tackles the challenge of optimizing usage of data center resources, controlling resources and workloads in an automated fashion.

VMTurbo's founding team came from SMARTS, a virtualization management vendor acquired by EMC in 2004 for $285 million. The deal attracted attention because 26 of SMARTS' 300 employees were PhDs. VMTurbo is funded by investments from Bain Capital Ventures, Highland Capital Partners, as well as angel investors.

Alpine Data Labs

Company Name: Alpine Data Labs
Tech Sector: Business Analytics Software
Key Product Name: Alpine Miner

The Lowdown: There's a lot of talk today about how businesses are struggling with "big data" and how to get value from the increasingly huge volumes of information. Alpine Data Labs has developed the Alpine Miner in-database analytics tool with "modeling to scoring" capabilities that the company says offers a breakthrough in big data predictive analytics. AlpineMiner, according to Alpine Data Labs, is designed for business users as well as hardcore data analysts and is more cost-effective than other predictive analysis systems. Founded in early 2010 and incubated inside Greenplum, the business intelligence and data warehouse software company EMC acquired last year, Alpine Data was spun off and recently raised $7.5 million in venture funding.

Cloupia

Company Name: Cloupia
Tech Sector: Cloud Computing
Key Product: Cloupia Unified Infrastructure Controller

The Lowdown: With its Unified Infrastructure Controller, Santa Clara, Calif.-based Cloupia, founded in 2009, looks to ease the management of next-generation data centers while adding new levels of automation. Working with service providers and enterprises, Cloupia offers cloud management capabilities like infrastructure control, provisioning, management and monitoring across physical, virtual and cloud environments with the goal of offering unified automation and management to the entire IT infrastructure.

Savage I/O

Company Name: Savage I/O
Tech Sector: Storage
Key Product: DataBrick


The Lowdown: Savage I/O is a veteran-owned business founded in 2010 as a developer of high-performance NAS and SAN appliances. Those appliances are based on the Batavia, N.Y.-based company's "DataBrick" concepts which fit up to 144 TBs of raw hard disk capacity in a 4U rack mount enclosure. The DataBrick is unique in its patent-pending tray that slides out from the front of the enclosure to give access to multiple rows of drives without the need to pull the enclosure out or open the entire case. Savage I/O has a channel portal to provide quick quotes, and recently introduced a financing program.

NSFOCUS Information Technology Co.

Company Name: NSFOCUS Information Technology Co.
Tech Sector: Security
Key Product: Anti-DDoS Solution (ADS)

The Lowdown: Though founded in 2000, NSFOCUS this year expanded beyond its native China into the North American market with a U.S. headquarters in Santa Clara, Calif. NSFOCUS targets full-fledged security with its network and applications security plays that include network intrusion detection and prevention, remote security assessment, Web security, cloud security and more. The company has become known for its flagship Anti-DDoS Solution, known as ADS, which is now a full-on intrusion prevention system that also offers behavior analysis. NSFOCUS has vowed to bring its channel-focused go-to-market strategy to North America.

Skydera

Company Name: Skydera
Tech Sector: Cloud Computing
Key Product: Skydera Cloud Automation Platform

The Lowdown: Skydera was founded in 2009 to democratize IT management and enable companies to launch and manage cloud-based data centers. The San Jose, Calif.-based company launched its centralized platform in 2010, a platform used to manage multiple cloud environments via a single interface. From that command center, users can manage servers, deploy applications, control user access, track usage and centralize billing. And Skydera supports cloud big boys like Amazon, Rackspace, GoGrid and SliceHost.