What they do: Along with Canonical, Eucalyptus supports Ubuntu and the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud. Eucalyptus also offers open source software that turns data-center resources into a cloud that can be controlled and customized by local IT, while also offering such capabilities as end-user customization, self-service provisioning, and legacy application support. Included APIs allow users to then extend internal apps to public clouds, such as Amazon EC2.
Customers: NASA and Eli Lilly.
Funding: $5.5 million Series A VC funding from Benchmark Capital and BV Capital.
Prior to co-founding Eucalyptus, Woody Rollins, CEO, co-founded Old Firehouse Capital.
Headquarters: Santa Barbara, CA.
What they do: Smartphone security, or rather lack thereof, is a disaster waiting to happen. Anyone who has seen PCs bog down when a bloated security suite runs knows that porting desktop-style security to the smartphone is a mistake.
Lookout’s approach is to combine two emerging technologies: smartphones and the cloud. A lightweight client communicates with cloud-based services to offer AV/firewall/ IPS protection, data backup and device lookdown/remote wiping if the handset is lost or stolen.
For any industry observers, one of the cloud’s biggest selling points is its potential to transform the mobile Internet. In order for the mobile platform to be truly enterprise-class, though, you can’t skimp on security.
Customers: For now, Lookout is a consumer, rather than enterprise security service. Currently, the beta version is free, although Lookout plans to charge a subscription fee in the future. Lookout also intends to release an enterprise version late this year or early next.
Don’t be surprise if Lookout or a startup like it follows the trail blazed by major PC security vendors and starts selling to the pipe providers, rather than consumers. It’s in the carriers’ interest to protect their networks by offering security as a free service to their own subscribers.
Funding: $5.5 million in Series A funding from Khosla Ventures, Trilogy Partnership and angel investors.
John Hering, CEO, founded Lookout (formerly Flexilis) with CTO Kevin Mahaffey in 2005. The two met as students at USC.
Headquarters: San Francisco, CA
What they do: Being able to monitor performance and availability across multiple computing environments (legacy apps, multiple SaaS offerings, cloud-based apps, etc.) will become increasingly important as organizations begin to deploy more and more IT resources and applications in the cloud.
Nimsoft’s Unified Monitoring solutions enable users to monitor and manage performance, availability, and business services across IT infrastructures – including SaaS, hosted, and cloud environments.
Customers: The company claims nearly 1,000 customers, including Rackspace, 1&1, Bluelock and Enki Consulting.
Funding: $12 million in two round of funding from Goldman Sachs, JMI Equity and Northzone Ventures.
Gary Read, President and CEO, previously founded Converse Software in 2002, which merged with Norway-based Nimsoft Software. Read of course became CEO of the merged company. He also formerly served as VP of Marketing at BMC Software.
Headquarters: Redwood City, CA.
What they do: Legacy storage platforms were not built to satisfy today’s virtual and cloud-based infrastructures. ParaScale’s software transforms user-selected, commodity hardware (including repurposed servers) into enterprise cloud storage. With ParaScale, performance and capacity can scale independently, and applications can run directly on ParaScale’s platform, transforming physical storage into a flexible, virtual layer that simplifies management and reduces costs.
Customers: Customers include Carpathia Hosting, BC Networks, Voxel, Sony Pictures Imageworks and the Stanford Genome Technology Center.
Funding: $11.37 million in Series A funding from Charles River Ventures, Menlo Ventures and undisclosed investors.
Before ParaScale, CEO Sajai Krishnan was GM of the StoreVault Division of NetApp.
Headquarters: Cupertino, CA.
What they do: Maintaining control is one of IT’s biggest challenges as data and apps sprawl over virtualized infrastructures and the cloud. Tap In Systems gives users control over virtual infrastructures, automating the deployment of cloud services around IT policies. Tap In claims that its system, which is built around open-source Nagios, keeps applications “running smoothly by monitoring all your cloud services with a single management system that is integrated with your operational processes.”
Customers: This is an early stage startup with no announced customers.
Funding: Only angel funding to date.
Peter Loh, co-founder and CEO, was previously in charge of engineering for GroundWork Open Source.
Headquarters: San Francisco, CA
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