CRN's Data Center 100: Part 2

Data Center 100: Part 2

CRN's Data Center 100 highlights the vendors, technologies and executives that are powering the data center in 2011. From innovative database software, to green data center technologies, to cloud data management services, this list covers it all.

Microsoft
Redmond, Wash.
Steve Ballmer
CEO


Microsoft is a critical part of nearly every data center with technology ranging from its ubiquitous Windows operating systems installed on the majority of servers and PCs to its fast-growing Hyper-V virtualization technology to its developer tools and widespread software applications including Word, Excel, SharePoint and more.

Mitel

Chandler, Ariz.
Don Smith
CEO


Mitel develops a broad range of communications solutions from basic business communications to sophisticated unified communications, and from prepackaged to tailored applications, all of which can be purchased outright or acquired as a managed service. Included are phone, communications software, conferencing and collaboration, and messaging solutions.

NEC Corporation of America

Irving, Texas
Takayuki Okada
President, CEO


NEC provides a wide range of IT products and services for enterprises and data centers, including servers, storage, networking and communications along with content management and security software. The company also provides a variety of services to go with those products, including financing and leasing, consulting and management services.

NetApp

Sunnyvale, Calif.
Tom Georgens
President, CEO


NetApp, one of the top system-independent storage vendors, has traditionally been a leader in the NAS market, but has in the past couple years turned its offerings into unified SAN/NAS appliances, all based on the same storage operating system and common management platform and a wide range of storage software.

newScale

San Mateo, Calif.
Scott Hammond
President, CEO


newScale provides self-service, service catalog, and life-cycle management software for enterprise IT and private/hybrid cloud computing. Enterprises and managed service providers can use its Service Catalog solutions to create and build self-service IT storefronts to fulfill internal and customer service requests across physical, virtual and cloud environments.

Nexsan Technologies

Woodland Hills, Calif.
Philip Black
CEO


Nexsan was a pioneer in the development of low-cost, large-capacity storage systems featuring SATA and SAS technology. The company also offers storage appliances to meet compliance or deduplication requirements. Many of Nexsan's storage systems include AutoMAID, a technology that powers down unnecessary storage disks to cut power and cooling costs.

Novell

Waltham, Mass.
Ronald Hovsepian
President, CEO


Novell, a developer of cloud and virtualization technology and the SuSE Linux distribution, is in transition. The company in November agreed sell its management and Linux technology to Attachmate in a deal that will also see nearly 900 Novell Linux-related patents sold to a secretive Microsoft-led organization, CPTN Holdings.

Oracle

Redwood Shores, Calif.
Larry Ellison
CEO


Oracle, the industry's largest provider of database and other software, in 2010 made a new data center play with its acquisition of Sun Microsystems. That gave Oracle server and storage platforms to combine with its software to create appliances.

Panasonic Corporation of America

Secaucus, N.J.
Bill Taylor
President, Panasonic System Networks Company of America


Panasonic has its fingers on many parts of the data center, including displays and videoconferencing. It is also a leading vendor of data center surveillance and monitoring solutions, including CCTV cameras, monitors, video recorders, video servers and video controllers, along with the software and services to match.

Pano Logic

Redwood City, Calif.
John Kish
President, CEO


Pano Logic produces thin-client devices for virtual desktop environments. Its solution includes the Pano Device, a desktop virtualization device with no CPU, memory, operating system, drivers, software or moving parts; Web-based management software; and technology to tie the Pano Device to virtual desktops in VMware or Microsoft virtualized environments.

Peak 10

Charlotte, N.C.
David Jones
President, CEO


Peak 10 offers data center and managed services to customers via a string of data centers in 10 cities in the Southeastern U.S. The company's data center services include co-location and enterprise hosting, while its managed services include application support, storage backup and recovery, disaster recovery, security and cloud computing.

Pelco by Schneider Electric

Clovis, Calif.
Dean Meyer
President, CEO


Pelco produces video surveillance and security solutions including discreet 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 for video/data. They integrate with third-party access control, alarm monitoring, and point-of-sale and loss prevention systems.

Pillar Data Systems

San Jose, Calif.
Mike Workman
Chairman, CEO


Pillar Data, the storage vendor owned by the investment arm of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, manufactures arrays that automatically provision capacity based on specific application requirements. The company's Pillar Axiom storage systems use virtualization and dynamic provisioning technologies to scale tomore than 1.6 petabytes of raw capacity.

Postini

Mountain View, Calif.
Quentin Gallivan
President, CEO


Postini, a Google subsidiary, provides e-mail and messaging security and compliance technologies. The company provides applications to protect -email from spam and viruses, set e-mail compliance policies, provide failover protection of messages, do discovery searches on messages, encrypt messages, and block links that allow spyware and viruses.

Promise Technology

Milpitas, Calif.
James Lee
President, CEO


Promise develops RAID storage arrays for companies ranging from small businesses to enterprises. For enterprise data centers, the company offers its VTrak E-class storage subsystems, a line of arrays ranging from SAS-based JBOD (non-RAID) solutions for direct-attached requirements to Fibre Channel RAID arrays for SAN-based storage.

Proofpoint

Sunnyvale, Calif.
Eric Hahn
CEO


Proofpoint focuses on providing SaaS-based e-mail solutions, along with physical and virtual appliances for managing e-mails. Those solutions include SaaS-based on-demand e-mail archiving solution for eDiscovery, regulatory compliance and e-mail storage management; SaaS-based security for inbound and outbound e-mails; and SaaS-based policy-based -email encryption.

Qlogic

Aliso Viejo, Calif.
Simon Biddiscombe
President, CEO


Qlogic provides components for building storage and IP networks. These include Fibre Channel, iSCSI, InfiniBand and Ethernet adapters; Fibre Channel and InfiniBand switches; and storage routers. The company's most recent addition are converged technology adapters that route LAN and SAN traffic over a common 10-Gbit Ethernet network.

Quantum

San Jose, Calif.
Rick Belluzzo
Chairman, CEO


Quantum specializes in the backing up, protecting and archiving of data. The company's product lineup includes a wide range of disk-to-disk backup appliances featuring deduplication technology to cut the amount of capacity required, along with tape libraries and stand-alone tape drives in most formats.

Quest Software

Aliso Viejo, Calif.
Douglas Garn
President, CEO


Quest provides software and services for managing physical and virtual IT environments. Its software falls into four categories, including software to monitor and manage ERP and Web-based applications, database development and administration tools, solutions for extending and securing Microsoft infrastructures, and virtualization and cloud management solutions.

Rackspace

San Antonio
Lanham Napier
President, CEO


Rackspace delivers enterprise-level hosting services to businesses of all sizes and types around the world. Its hosting business comes in three flavors, including 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 is a leading provider of IT infrastructure solutions to manage power efficiency and improve data center productivity. Its line card includes tools to automate the monitoring and management of almost every device in the data center in both physical and virtualized environments across a LAN or WAN or the Internet.

Red Hat

Raleigh, N.C.
Jim Whitehurst
President, CEO


Red Hat provides the IT industry's most recognized open- source operating system, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which is the top competitor for Microsoft's Windows in data center server and desktop deployments. The company is also the developer of 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, personalized and compliant desktops independent of the underlying computing infrastructure–thin clients, virtual desktops, physical desktops or server-based computing environments. This lets data centers provide users with on-demand access to their personalized workspaces from any device.

Riverbed Technology

San Francisco
Jerry Kennelly
Chairman, CEO


Riverbed is one of the leading providers of WAN optimization technology, which increases the performance of sharing of applications and data across wide area networks. The company's Steelhead appliances increase network throughput and application performance, while its Cascade appliances provide enterprisewide network and application visibility and analysis.

Rocket Software

Newton, Mass.
Andy Youniss
CEO, Director


Rocket Software develops, licenses and supports enterprise infrastructure software and solutions in such domains as application development, application modernization, business intelligence, compliance and security, consumer productivity, database servers and tools, file transfer, mainframe productivity, network management, publishing and search, SOA and integration, storage management, terminal emulation and text mining.

Samsung Electronics America

Ridgefield Park, N.J.
CS Choi
President, CEO


Samsung, one of the largest IT vendors in the world, has its footprint all over the data center from portable PCs to printers and monitors and displays to storage. The company is a major producer of hard drives, and one of the largest producers of solid state drives (SSDs).

SAP America

Newtown Square, Mass.
Bill McDermott (pictured) and Jim Hagemann Snabe
Co-CEOs


SAP is one of the world's largest business software companies, and offers enterprise data centers a wide range of applications including solutions for analytics and business intelligence, mobile platforms, enterprise information management solutions, and a business suite that includes CRM, ERP, supply chain management, product life-cycle managemen, and more.

Seagate

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


Seagate produces a wide range of hard drives for business users, including drives for enterprise servers and storage arrays as well as a range of drives for desktop and portable PCs as well as for more specific uses such as with video recorders. The company in 2010 started producing SSDs.

Silicon Graphics International (SGI)

Fremont, Calif.
Mark Barrenechea
President, CEO


SGI, formed by the 2009 acquisition of Silicon Graphics by Rackable Systems, offers entry-level to high-end scale-out and scale-up servers and data storage solutions as well as infrastructure products designed-to-order for large-scale data center deployments. Much of the company's product line targets the scientific, technical and business communities.

Silver Peak

Santa Clara, Calif.
Rick Tinsley
President, CEO


Silver Peak develops WAN acceleration tools, which includes hardware and software to reduce the amount of traffic sent across a WAN and deliver information locally whenever possible. The company provides both physical and virtual WAN acceleration appliances, including a new line of virtual appliances for accelerating data center-to-data center performance.

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. The company's solutions are mainly available as appliances. All are used in distributed enterprises or by managed service providers.

Sophos

Burlington, Mass.
Steve Munford
CEO


Sophos provides a range of endpoint, encryption, web, network access control (NAC), and email security software solutions which help data center protect customers and users from malware, meet compliance requirements, protect data regardless of where stored, and increase IT efficiency.

STEC

Santa Ana, Calif.
Manouch Moshayedi
Chairman, CEO


STEC, which was founded originally as PC memory upgrade vendor Simple Technology, is today one of the top providers of SSDs to enterprise storage vendors. Its Zeus brand of SSDs are found in arrays from many of the top array vendors, including EMC, Compellent, Hitachi Data Systems, HP and IBM.

StillSecure

Superior, Colo.
Rajat Bhargava
Chairman, CEO


StillSecure helps control who connects to a network by making sure connected devices pose no danger and remain compliant with security policies. The company's products include the Safe Access network access control software, the Strata Guard intrusion detection and prevention system, and a vulnerability management platform.

Stratus Technologies

Maynard, Mass.
David Laurello
Chairman, President, CEO


Stratus develops fault-tolerant servers and software to add fault-tolerant capabilities to industry-standard servers. The company's ftServers provide continuous availability by tying redundant hardware inside a chassis in such a way that both process the same commands so that a hardware failure will not disrupt operations.

Supermicro

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


Supermicro develops and manufacturers rack-mount, pedestal, and blade servers, high-end workstations, and storage appliances based on industry-standard components. The company also supplies components such as chassis and motherboards to other server and storage system builders.

Symantec

Mountain View, Calif.
Enrique Salem
President, CEO


Symantec wears two big hats in the data center. It is one of the IT industry's top developers of security technology and related products in the risk management and compliance market, and is the largest non-hardware developer of data protection, data management, and disaster recovery and business continuity software.

Syncsort

Woodcliff Lake, N.J.
Flavio Santoni
CEO


Syncsort provides technology that speeds up the data protection process in virtual environments while cutting the backup footprint and providing immediate access to data during the recovery process. The company also offers technology to eliminate performance bottlenecks in customers' existing data integration platforms, including on mainframe servers.

Terremark Worldwide

Miami
Manuel Medina
Chairman, CEO


Terremark delivers government and enterprise customers a suite of managed solutions including managed hosting, collocation, disaster recovery, security, data storage and cloud computing services. The company offers the services from its network of 12 data centers in North and South America and Europe.

Toshiba America Information Systems

Irvine, Calif.
Mark Simons
President, CEO


Toshiba offers a variety of data center products including portable PCs, telephone and telephone equipment, video security systems, printers, and hard disk drives. The company late last year introduced its first enterprise-class solid state drives (SSDs) targeting data center users, with shipments expected to start by mid-2011.

Trend Micro

Cupertino, Calif.
Eva Chen
CEO


Trend Micro offers a full suite of software with end-point protection,Web and messaging security, data protection, and other types of data center security. The company also provides SaaS and managed security solutions to service providers. It also offers the Trend Micro Smart Protection Network, a cloud-based security platform.

Veeam Software

Columbus, Ohio
Ratmir Timashev
President, CEO


Veeam offers a suite of products for managing VMware environments including Veeam Backup & Replication software for backing up data; Veeam Reporter for enterprise reporting, change management and capacity planning for VMware; Veeam Monitor, for VMware performance monitoring and alerts; and Veeam Business View to help combat virtual machine sprawl.

VM6 Software

Montreal, Quebec
Claude Goudreault
CEO


VM6' software virtualizes storage, servers and desktops at the same time on a single server. It leverages Microsoft Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V to create a completely virtualized IT infrastructure with a simple high availability solution in less than an hour without the need to deploy a SAN.

VMware

Palo Alto, Calif.
Paul Maritz
President, CEO


VMware is the primary vendor of solutions for building virtualized server environments. It is also one of the leaders in developing technology to help customers use their virtualized environments to take advantage of virtual desktop and cloud computing in conjunction with a wide range of technology partners working with VMware.

WatchGuard Technologies

Seattle
Joe Wang
CEO


WatchGuard builds all-in-one network and content security solutions to help customers protect corporate content, networks, and the businesses they power. The company'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 email content security, as well as a unified offering covering all three via its Websense Triton solution. Its web security offering is available as software, SaaS, or an appliance, while its email protection is available as a local software application or as a hosted service.

Western Digital

Irvine, Calif.
John Coyne
President and CEO


Western Digital is one of the three top producers of hard drives, and counts in its product line drives for desktop, mobile, enterprise, and audio-video uses. The company also recently entered the SSD market with drives targeting mobile and desktop PCs and embedded systems.

Wyse Technology

San Jose, Calif.
Tarkan Maner
President, CEO, Chief Customer Advocate


Wyse focuses on what it calls Cloud Client Computing with a portfolio that includes thin client, zero client and cloud PC client solutions. The company also offers management, desktop virtualization and cloud software to support desktops, laptops, and next-generation mobile devices for virtual and cloud environments.

Xiotech

Colorado Springs, Colo.
Alan Atkinson
CEO


Xiotech develops storage arrays based on its Intelligent Storage Element storage blades. A single ISE storage blade can handle morr than 27,000 Exchange users, more than 1,000 virtual desktops, 750 DVD-quality video streams, 25,000 MP3 streams, or four studio-class movie editing projects. It also features self-healing operations.

Xsigo Systems

San Jose, Calif.
Ashok Krishnamurthi
Executive Chairman


The Xsigo I/O Director is a hardware and software solution for dynamically connecting any server to any Ethernet or Fibre Channel network. With its virtual I/O capabilities, customers can move, add or change connectivity on demand, with up to 64 isolated connections per server possible through a single cable

For more of CRN's Data Center 100, check out Part 1 of our list.