10 hot data-center virtualization startups to watch
Data-center virtualization is about much more than servers these days. Everything from storage to applications to entire infrastructure stacks are being virtualized by startups seeking to push virtualization throughout the entire IT stack.
Or, to borrow from Marc Andreessen, virtualization is eating the data center.
The startups in this roundup are well-funded, with the exception of brand-new ones just out of stealth, but even those have seasoned founders and compelling products under developments. The ventures detailed here represent the future of the data center, offering everything from software-defined servers to software-defined block storage to managed hybrid-cloud services and infrastructure.
What they do: Provide multi-cloud application services
Funding: $115 million in four rounds from Cisco Investments, DAG Ventures, Greylock Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Menlo Ventures
CEO: Amit Pandey, who formerly served as CEO of Zenprise, which was acquired by Citrix in 2013
Problem they solve: Every application needs application services, such as load balancing, application firewalls, and service meshes. In complex, fluid IT environments, however, delivering those services is a challenge.
This is especially true of multi-cloud environments. As enterprises mix traditional architectures with microservices in both private and public clouds, traditional application-delivery methods, such as application delivery controllers (ADC), can’t keep up.
The traditional manual approach of requisitioning, installing and configuring ADCs is a process that can take weeks, if not longer. ADCs are hard to automate, must be managed individually and they don’t scale in the cloud.
How they solve it: Avi Networks’ flagship product, Vantage, is a multi-cloud application-delivery platform. Vantage consists of three core components: a software load balancer, a web-application firewall (WAF) that relies on machine learning and automation, and what the startup calls an elastic service mesh.
The mesh delivers multi-cloud application services for containerized applications with microservices architectures through dynamic service discovery, application maps and micro-segmentation.
The software-defined platform separates the control and data planes, unlike traditional appliance-based ADCs. The ability to dispatch services to applications wherever they live without having to worry about the underlying infrastructure gives administrators more flexibility to embrace new application technologies.
Why they’re a hot startup to watch: Avi Networks is positioned in a high-growth, rapidly innovating market where it’s already carved out a sizable niche. An Avi spokesperson emailed that 20% of the Fortune 50 are Avi customers. With such named customers as Adobe, Palo Alto Networks and Swisscom, the claim sounds credible.
Avi has raised $115 million in funding from top-tier VCs, and its senior leadership team has a string of successful exits behind them, including Zenprise to Citrix for $335 million, Terracotta to Software AG (terms not disclosed), Andiamo to Cisco for $750M, and Shasta Networks to Nortel for $340 million.
Finally, if the entire data center is being eaten by software, the underlying infrastructure will need to be as flexible and elastic as the applications it must serve. The Vantage platform looks to be a big leap in that direction.
What they do: Provide software-defined distributed block storage
Funding: $35 million in two rounds of funding. Investors include Square Peg Capital, Battery Ventures, Micron, Qualcomm Ventures and Western Digital Capital.
CEO: Lior Gal, who previously served as Global VP at Data Direct Networks.
Problem they solve: Newer Flash media such as NVMe Flash have raised expectations on storage latency. An individual local NVMe drive can deliver performance with single-digit microsecond latency.
