2016 Virtualization 50
Targeting The Virtualized Data Center
Vendors are talking more and more about the mythical software-defined data center, an architecture that someday will make it possible to move the key infrastructure components -- think compute, storage, networking, client computing and so on -- into a software layer sitting on top of commodity hardware. While it will take time to realize the benefits that a full software-defined infrastructure will bring, that isn’t stopping vendors of those various components from virtualizing key capabilities and turning them into software-defined whatever.
With all the changes, it’s important to realize that the channel remains at the center of the virtualization universe. Virtualizing a data center environment requires not only new software and services, but integration with a company’s business processes and legacy hardware and software.
Here are 50 key virtualization technology vendors working with channel partners.
Actifio
Headquarters: Boston
Ash Ashutosh, Founder, CEO
Actifio helps enterprises and service providers virtualize their data via its Virtual Data Pipeline technology, which decouples data from the infrastructure for increased resiliency and access to the cloud. It replaces siloed data management applications with an approach that lets data be captured from production applications and then managed and used when and where needed.
AppSense
Headquarters: Sunnyvale, Calif.
Scott Arnold, President, CEO
AppSense adds personalization to virtual desktop infrastructure based on Microsoft Hyper-V and Enterprise Desktop Virtualization, VMware Horizon View, and Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp environments. It gives IT departments granular management of endpoint policies, security and performance while providing user experience flexibility.
Big Switch Networks
Headquarters: Santa Clara, Calif.
Douglas Murray, CEO
Big Switch is an early SDN leader. Its flagship Big Cloud Fabric bare-metal SDN switching fabric targets new data center deployments for modern workloads like private clouds, while its Big Tap Monitoring Fabric provides an entry-level network monitoring solution. The company, which in January closed a $48.5 million funding round, now supports VMware NSX.
Blue Medora
Headquarters: Grand Rapids, Mich.
Nathan Owen, President, CEO
Blue Medora’s software integrates with industry-leading cloud system management and application performance management solutions to turn all the components of an IT ecosystem into a comprehensive solution to let IT teams visualize every platform and system. The software provides a clear view of product performance, tracks detailed metrics, and offers insights on problems before they happen.
Bromium
Headquarters: Cupertino, Calif.
Ian Pratt, Co-Founder, CEO
Bromium uses virtualization technology to provide cybersecurity. The company’s technology places every user task in a secure micro-VM (virtual machine) to protect endpoints against both known and unknown attacks, including zero-day attacks, drive-by downloads, spearphishing attacks, and advanced persistent threats. It provides real-time monitoring and alerting of attacks.
Catbird
Headquarters: Scotts Valley, Calif.
David Keasey, CEO
Catbird develops software-defined security for virtual infrastructures, with software that provides visibility into and protection of private clouds and virtual data centers based on VMware and OpenStack technology. The company in 2014 unveiled a solution for extending security policy automation across on-premise and OpenStack environments.
Cisco Systems
Headquarters: San Jose, Calif.
Chuck Robbins, CEO
Cisco provides server, networking and security technology for physical, virtualized and cloud data centers. Cisco is the king of partnering in virtualized data centers, combining its server and networking technology with storage from nearly every major vendor, and in March introduced its first self-developed hyper-converged infrastructure solution.
Citrix Systems
Headquarters: Santa Clara, Calif.
Kirill Tatarinov, President, CEO
Citrix provides a wide range of virtualization and cloud technologies including application and desktop virtualization, enterprise mobility management, file sync and sharing, cloud networking, collaboration and cloud services. Citrix in 2015 unveiled a cloud service to migrate VMware Horizon View clients to XenDesktop and XenApp, and collaborated with Red Hat on OpenStack clouds.
CloudPhysics
Headquarters: Santa Clara, Calif.
Jeff Hausman, CEO
CloudPhysics provides predictive analytics for IT. The company’s subscription-based software captures data from virtualized environments, analyzes it, and provides specific actionable insights to let IT teams optimize data centers and let service providers monitor and diagnose current and potential IT infrastructure issues and recommend remedial actions.
CoreOS
Headquarters: San Francisco
Alex Polvi, CEO
Linux developer CoreOS, funded in part by Google, develops a platform that allows the implementation of Google-like infrastructures across enterprise data centers. The solution combines CoreOS’ lightweight Linux distribution targeted at hosting Linux containers with the Kubernetes container management platform originally developed by Google along with the Tectonic and Quay container technologies.
Cumulus Networks
Headquarters: Mountain View, Calif.
JR Rivers, Co-Founder, CEO
Cumulus Networks develops three applications for industry-standard Ethernet switches to provide data centers with open networking: Cumulus VX open-source software to let cloud admins and network engineers test Cumulus Networks technology in virtual environments; the Cumulus Linux operating system; and Cumulus Rack Management Platform, a purpose-built network OS for out-of-band management switches.
DataCore Software
Headquarters: Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
George Teixeira, President, CEO
DataCore develops software-defined storage and virtual SAN solutions for scaling storage architectures. The company in 2015 extended its technology via the development of a hyper-converged infrastructure software stack, along with solutions that tie into SAP HANA and VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes technologies.
Dell
Headquarters: Round Rock, Texas
Michael Dell, Chairman, CEO
Dell offers a range of virtualized server and data storage systems for its data center customers. The vendor’s servers and storage systems are integrated with virtualization platforms such as VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix XenServer. Dell by year’s end will be the virtualization leader after it acquires EMC and VMware.
Delphix
Headquarters: Menlo Park, Calif.
Jedidiah Yueh, President, CEO
The Delphix Virtual Data Platform provides quick, secure and automatic data delivery. The technology accelerates enterprise applications and business intelligence by eliminating redundant infrastructure. The company in 2015 acquired Axis Technology Software to enable secure, self-service data delivery for application projects and closed a $75 million funding round.
Docker
Headquarters: San Francisco
Ben Golub, CEO
Docker is the company behind the open-source Docker platform, which allows an application to be created and run as a collection of Docker containers working across nearly any infrastructure to provide faster software development and increased infrastructure efficiency. Last year, the company closed a $95 million funding round and acquired four companies.
EMC
Headquarters: Hopkinton, Mass.
Joe Tucci, Chairman, CEO
EMC is a top provider of data storage, cloud and virtualization technology, enterprise security tools, and big data and analytics software. The EMC Federation builds solutions that combine technology from EMC Information Infrastructure, VMware, RSA, VCE and Pivotal. Its acquisition by Dell is on track to be completed this year.
Ericom Software
Closter, N.J.
Eran Heyman, Chairman, Chief Architect
Ericom Software provides server-based application access, virtualization, and RDP acceleration solutions to help customers access enterprise mission-critical applications using a variety of client systems. Its latest solution, Ericom Connect, supports up to 100,000 concurrent users per Connect Access Management Server with security, and provides centrally managed access to Windows applications and desktops from any device.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Headquarters: Palo Alto, Calif.
Meg Whitman, President, CEO
Hewlett Packard Enterprise, or HPE, is the heir to the former HP’s enterprise server, storage, data center infrastructure, physical and SDN, private cloud, and services businesses. HPE’s StoreVirtual software-defined storage technology is the centerpiece the company’s new hyper-converged infrastructure solutions.
Hitachi Data Systems
Headquarters: Santa Clara, Calif.
Jack Domme, CEO
Hitachi Data Systems develops virtual storage technology and converged and hyper-converged infrastructure solutions combining its servers and storage with servers and networking from multiple technology partners. The company has combined much of its disk and flash storage solutions behind VSP, its storage virtualization platform.
IBM
Headquarters: Armonk, N.Y.
Ginni Rometty, Chairman, President, CEO
For IBM, virtualization, storage and the cloud is now job No. 1 now that the company has sold its x86 server business to Lenovo. The company has turned its SoftLayer technology into a top public cloud offering and over the past year has invested heavily in storage virtualization technology and cloud-based security.
IGEL Technology
Headquarters: New York
Heiko Gloge, Managing Director, Partner
IGEL is a major developer of thin-client and zero-client devices and software for virtual desktop infrastructure solutions, including hardware devices with single-core, dual-core and quad-core processors; as well as models built into touch-screen displays; software to turn desktop and mobile PCs into thin clients; and virtual desktop management software.
Juniper Networks
Headquarters: Sunnyvale, Calif.
Rami Rahim, CEO
While Juniper Networks continues to be a significant provider of networking and network security technology, the company also has become a leader in SDN based on its Contrail platform and network function virtualization. The company expanded its wireless market in 2015 with alliances with Ruckus Wireless and Aerohive Networks.
Liquidware Labs
Headuarters: Alpharetta, Ga.
David Bieneman, Co-Founder, CEO
Liquidware Labs provides a series of desktop management software applications including Stratusphere FIT assessment solution for capturing desktop metrics; ProfileUnity for managing and migrating user profiles; FlexApp for managing on-demand applications; Stratusphere UX monitoring and performance diagnostic tools; and Flex-IO storage performance acceleration in virtual desktop infrastructure environments.
Maxta
Headquarters: Sunnyvale, Calif.
Yoram Novick, Founder, CEO
Maxta is the developer of the Maxta Storage Platform, which works with any combination of compute and storage devices in industry-standard servers to form a hyper-converged infrastructure solution for mission-critical applications, virtual desktop infrastructure, and remote and branch offices. The company also offers MaxDeploy, a fully configured hyper-converged infrastructure appliance.
Microsoft
Headquarters: Redmond, Wash.
Satya Nadella, CEO
Adopting Microsoft’s Hyper-V virtualization technology is the first step toward moving all or part of a business’ operations to Microsoft Azure, one of the industry’s leading public cloud platforms. Azure is supported by multiple leading Microsoft technologies including Office 365.
Midokura
Headquarters: San Francisco
Dan Mihai Dumitriu, Co-Founder, CEO
Midokura develops the MidoNet network virtualization platform. MidoNet includes a software layer that runs directly within existing physical network hardware to help centralize network control and improve data center efficiency. Version 5.0, released in February, now includes flow history through physical and virtual hosts, usage reports for tenant chargebacks, traffic counters and port mirroring.
Nexenta
Headquarters: Santa Clara, Calif.
Tarkan Maner, Chairman, CEO
Nexenta, which develops software-defined storage software, partners with vendors such as Dell and VMware in virtualized storage environments. Its flagship NexentaStor, and NexentaEdge, a software-only scale-out block-and-object storage solution with high-performance global inline deduplication and compression for Linux-based petabyte-scale clusters, are targeted at OpenStack environments.
Nutanix
Headquarters: San Jose, Calif.
Dheeraj Pandey, Chairman, CEO
Nutanix is the early leader in the hyper-converged infrastructure market with technology that combines compute and storage resources into a single appliance that scales both resources by connecting additional nodes. The company expanded its channel presence with deals to let Dell and Lenovo OEM its software stack on their hardware.
Oracle
Headquarters: Redwood Shores, Calif.
Mark Hurd, Safra Catz, Co-CEOs
Oracle offers a full range of virtualization technologies from desktop to server, networking and data center. The company has been busy expanding its capabilities, including a couple of key acquisitions including the February purchase of Ravello Systems, which developed nested virtualization technology, and the December purchase of Docker container startup StackEngine.
Palo Alto Networks
Headquarters: Santa Clara, Calif.
Mark McLaughlin, Chairman, President, CEO
Palo Alto focuses on protecting networks from targeted cyberattacks. The company’s integrated platform combines network, cloud and endpoint security to detect and prevent attacks against physical and virtualized environments. Palo Alto in 2015 launched Aperture, a service to solve security challenges around sanctioned SaaS applications such as Box, Dropbox, Google Drive and Salesforce.
Parallels
Headquarters: Seattle
Birger Steen, CEO
Parallels develops cross-platform solutions that allow clients to use and access their applications and files on any device or operating system, including Windows, Mac, iOS, Android or the cloud. The company’s solutions allow access to applications and files regardless of whether they are local, remote, in a private data center or in the cloud.
Pivot3
Headquarters: Austin, Texas
Ron Nash, Chairman, CEO
Pivot3 builds its scalable Pivot3 Enterprise HCI converged compute and storage appliances. The software offers shared compute and storage resource pools for tasks like VMware Horizon Suite-based virtual desktops and business continuity and disaster recovery. The company in January acquired NexGen Storage to bring dynamic quality-of-service capabilities to hyper-converged infrastructure solutions.
Plexxi
Headquarters: Nashua, N.H.
Rich Napolitano, CEO
Plexxi develops SDN software that configures a network based on application requirements. That software sits on the company’s software-definable hardware platform, which Plexxi said can be configured based on application requirements. The company last fall received a $35 million funding round, and in January received an unspecified amount of funding from GV (formerly Google Ventures).
Plumgrid
Headquarters: Santa Clara, Calif.
Larry Lang, CEO
SDN vendor Plumgrid offers the Plumgrid Open Networking Suite 4.0 to help enterprises and service providers operationalize OpenStack cloud’s virtual networks and SDN deployments. Plumgrid CloudApex is an SDN visualization and monitoring platform that works with Plumgrid ONS to display real-time status of OpenStack physical and virtual resources.
Pluribus Networks
Headquarters: Palo Alto, Calif.
Kumar Srikantan, CEO
Pluribus Networks’ Netvisor operating system for SDN is a programmable, open-source-based solution that is highly available and scalable. The company claims it runs Layer 2 and Layer 3 networking more efficiently and at a lower cost than traditional switching infrastructure while providing agility, insight and security for data center networking.
Primary Data
Headquarters: Los Altos, Calif.
Lance Smith, Chairman, CEO
Primary Data delivers dynamic data mobility through data virtualization via its storage-agnostic DataSphere platform, which provides intelligent, automated data mobility across different storage tiers without application disruption while turning islands of storage into globally available resources. DataSphere operates outside the data path to provide performance and scalability and to create a virtualized global dataspace.
Red Hat
Headquarters: Raleigh, N.C.
Jim Whitehurst, President, CEO
Red Hat continues to be a major force in the virtualization market, challenging VMware with Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and building a strong software-defined storage presence. The company in 2015 expanded its capabilities to work with Linux-ready containers, as well as in software-defined storage based on its Ceph and Gluster technologies.
Al Monserrat
RES Software
Headquarters: Radnor, Pa.
Al Monserrat, CEO
RES started out in the user data virtualization space and has since branched out into security and IT management. Its software leverages predictive analytics to identify anomalous behavior in a user’s workspace while also letting IT admins lock down apps and data to specific sets of users.
Silver Peak
Headquarters: Santa Clara, Calif.
David Hughes, Founder, Chairman, CEO
WAN optimization technology developer Silver Peak’s flagship solution Unity is an intelligent WAN fabric for tackling increasingly complicated data paths between physical locations by monitoring the status of those paths and dynamically routing traffic on an optimal path. Last year, the company shifted its strategy to focus more on broadband WAN optimization.
SimpliVity
Headquarters: Westborough, Mass.
Doron Kempel, CEO
SimpliVity develops the OmniCube converged infrastructure solution that combines server and storage capabilities into a single x86-based system available exclusively via the channel. In addition to its own line of hyper-converged infrastructure appliances, SimpliVity provides its technology for Cisco and Lenovo servers. The company last year introduced the third generation of its technology.
StrataCloud
Headquarters: Atlanta
Brian Cohen, CEO
StrataCloud develops unified infrastructure management solutions for turning virtual, converged and cloud environments into a software-defined infrastructure. Its StrataCloud SDI platform abstracts data center resources into a software-defined layer while automating infrastructure installation and application provisioning. StrataCloud VMC is a virtualization management solution for VMware-based virtual environments.
Stratoscale
Headquarters: Marlborough, Mass.
Ariel Maislos, Founder, CEO
Hyper-converged infrastructure software developer Stratoscale, funded in part by Intel Capital, Cisco and SanDisk, develops software that, when combined with industry-standard servers, competes with such vendors as Nutanix, SimpliVity and VMware. The startup late last year officially released its first solution, Stratoscale Symphony, which scales from three to hundreds of nodes.
Talari Networks
Headquarters: San Jose, Calif.
Emerick Woods, President, CEO
Software-defined WAN developer Talari Networks’ Thinking SD-WAN technology proactively manages network capacity, reliability and performance in real time, packet by packet. This adaptive private networking software combines detailed one-way measurement of each packet with intelligent link aggregation to create an intelligent, self-correcting network to help applications continue without interruption even during failures.
Teradici
Headquarters: Burnaby, British Columbia
Dan Cordingley, President, CEO
Teradici is known for PC-over-IP, software and hardware technology that boosts multimedia performance on virtual desktops and devices, allowing 3-D graphics and high-definition video to run over a remote connection. The company is a key partner of VMware and works with Amazon Web Services.
Unidesk
Headquarters: Marlborough, Mass.
Don Bulens, President, CEO
Unidesk virtualizes everything above the hypervisor, including the Windows operating system, applications and users, as separately managed layers to help simplify building, patching and supporting virtual desktops. Its technology is integrated with VMware Horizon View, Citrix XenDesktop and Microsoft Remote Desktop Services. The company last year extended its capabilities to Windows Server and Hyper-V.
VDIworks
Headquarters: Austin, Texas
Saad Hussain, President, CEO
VDIworks sells virtual desktop and cloud computing software, including VDI Pro, a virtual desktop delivery platform that handles deployment of cloud-hosted VDI or Desktop-as-a-Service. Its software supports HTML5 clients and is integrated with the XenServer Hypervisor. Its VDI solution in January was certified by CenturyLink for use with the CenturyLink Cloud platform.
Veeam
Headquarters: Baar, Switzerland
Ratmir Timashev, CEO
Veeam is a leading provider of data protection technology for virtualized environments. The company offers tight integration with Microsoft Azure and VMware vCloud Air to extend data protection to the cloud. Veeam Availability Suite v9, introduced in January, enables SLAs for recovery time and point objectives of less than15 minutes for all applications.
VeloCloud
Headquarters: Mountain View, Calif.
Sanjay Uppal, Co-Founder, CEO
VeloCloud develops a cloud-delivered software-defined WAN solution that terminates, inspects and applies differentiated treatments to traffic in the data plane. It is a cloud-based, multitenant solution that connects to applications worldwide located in private, public, SaaS and hybrid data centers. Service providers and partners can take advantage of pay-as-you go capabilities.
VMware
Headquarters: Palo Alto, Calif.
Pat Gelsinger, CEO
VMware remains the leader by far in terms of the platform used by companies to virtualize their IT as the first step toward building cloud infrastructures. VMware has built on that strength to become a leader in virtualized networking, storage and data center infrastructure, and is moving fast to be a cloud technology leader.
Zerto
Headquarters: Boston
Ziv Kedem, Co-Founder, CEO
Zerto develops disaster recovery software for virtual and cloud environments. Its flagship Zerto Virtual Replication product competes with VMware’s Site Recovery Manager and others. The software supports replicating and migrating data between VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisors, and from private clouds to public clouds. The company in January closed a $50 million funding round.