10 Hot Emerging Vendors For January 2012

Ready For Prime Time

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 start-ups 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.

Stealthbits Technologies

Company: Stealthbits Technologies
Tech Sector: Software
Key Product: StealthAudit Management Platform

The Lowdown: Stealthbits launched in 2001 and has become a player in the Microsoft infrastructure and application management space. With its StealthAudit Management Platform, the company looks to manage the full Microsoft environment with data collection, action modules, analysis modules, reporting capabilities and core components. The Glen Rock, N.J.-based company bills itself as a leading provider of IT compliance, security and operational management solutions for the Microsoft computing platform.

BlazeMeter

Company: BlazeMeter
Tech Sector: Cloud Computing
Key Product: BlazeMeter load and performance testing

The Lowdown: BlazeMeter launched less than a year ago -- February 2011 to be exact -- and came out swinging with its cloud-based service for load and performance testing. And in December, the momentum continued, with the Tel Aviv-based company revealing that it raked in $1.2 million in venture funding. BlazeMeter's service is based on the Apache JMeter open-source project. It does load and performance testing for Web applications and determines how apps and systems will perform under certain circumstances. The company said it provides realtime analysis of user impact on Web apps and cloud services.

SecondLook Solutions

Company: SecondLook Solutions
Tech Sector: Software
Key Product: SecondLook Solutions Document Management System

The Lowdown: Cloud-based document management systems may not be sexy, but SecondLook Solutions has found its niche specializing in the legal market. SecondLook was founded in 2010 in East Rockaway, N.Y. The company's document management play is a SaaS offering that delivers digital document services to let clients search, organize and retrieve information in documents from anywhere at any time.

SlimWare Utilities

Company: SlimWare Utilities
Tech Sector: Software
Key Product: SlimComputer

The Lowdown: Mississippi may not be a high-tech haven, but just outside of Biloxi in Ocean Springs is SlimWare Utilities, a provider of community-driven and crowd-sourced software and services designed to clean, repair, update and optimize PCs. According to the company, SlimWare was founded in 2009 on the premise that "cloud computing and crowd-sourced applications will revolutionize the performance of personal computers." With that in mind, SlimWare Utilities offers downloadable software and services that let users tidy up and update their machines with its trio of flagship products: SlimComputer, SlimCleaner and SlimDrivers.

Nutanix

Company: Nutanix
Tech Sector: Storage
Key Product: Nutanix Complete Cluster

The Lowdown: Founded in 2009, Nutanix is riding the virtualization wave. The San Jose, Calif.-based company says users can virtualize the data center without requiring a SAN, while still offering performance, scalability and data management capabilities. With its flagship Nutanix Complete Cluster's converged compute and storage architecture, Nutanix offers the building blocks for virtualization. The hardware and software play offers the complete server and storage capabilities needed to run virtual machines and store data, which lets users start with what's needed now and grow from there. Since launching the product in 2011, Nutanix has already hit several key milestones, scoring $25 million in Series B funding and receiving a host of industry accolades.

VisiStat

Company: VisiStat
Tech Sector: Software
Key Product Name: VisiStat

The Lowdown: Virtually every business has some Web presence today, using the Internet to reach new customers and expand sales into new markets. But how effective are those efforts? It's a question many can't answer. VisiStat develops cloud-based customer intelligence applications that businesses use to gain insight into the effectiveness of their demand-generation efforts. The VisiStat Web analytics system captures complex analytical data in realtime and simplifies it for businesses to use when making sales and marketing decisions. Earlier this month it debuted VisiStat 9, which offers social media measurement, enhanced sales conversion reporting and analysis, improved marketing attribution capabilities, and more powerful lead capture and management tools. The company has an active reseller program, including white-label opportunities, and CEO Jim Bennette said channel sales are a rapidly growing component of its business.

AppAssure

Company: AppAssure
Tech Sector: Software
Key Product: AppAssure backup and replication

The Lowdown: Reston, Va.-based AppAssure offers unified backup and replication software across virtual, physical and cloud environments with the guarantee of instant and 100 percent reliable data and application recovery from the server to the data center, and to the cloud. Through its software, AppAssure, which was founded in 2006, permits VMware backup, Hyper-V backup, Windows Server backup and Microsoft Exchange Server backup and protects data and the entire application in all environments. The company grew nearly 200 percent in 2011 and in the past three years has grown 3,500 percent.

Newvem

Company: Newvem
Tech Sector: Cloud Computing
Key Product: Newvem analysis-based cloud management

The Lowdown: While currently in beta, Newvem offers a service that analyzes streams of cloud usage data metrics and looks for potential problems or anomalies. It examines costs, security, compliance, utilization and availability by measuring usage patterns to highlight areas that require attention. Newvem, which was founded in Israel in 2010, calls the process "analytics-based cloud management."

NopSec

Company: NopSec
Tech Sector: Security
Key Product: NopSec Security-as-a-Service

The Lowdown: Barely four years old, New York-based NopSec is targeting the SMB market with its suite of security services and Security-as-a-Service plays, focusing mainly on finance, banking, law, entertainment and media. NopSec prides itself on taking a proactive approach to security by automating hacking tools to mimic intrusions on Web apps, mobile apps and wired and wireless networks. The goal is to find the vulnerabilities before the bad guys can and ensure they can't be exploited. NopSec also offers security-penetration testing services to reveal the weaknesses in customers' wired and wireless networks, Web applications and databases.

Auraya Systems

Company: Auraya Systems
Tech Sector: Security
Key Product: ArmorVox Speaker Identity System

The Lowdown: We've all seen fingerprint scanners, but what about a security solution that leverages your voice? Nashua, N.H.-based Auraya Systems, founded in 2006, is doing just that with its ArmorVox Speaker Identity System, a biometric security play that verifies a user's voice for authentication and identity management. And Auraya is betting on the channel to get ArmorVox into the market. The company said it relies on partners to integrate its ArmorVox Speaker Identity System into phone, Web or wireless services.