Unidesk Makes the Grade at MIT
It's a dog-eat-dog world out there in the increasingly intense VDI management space. The competition is so tough that it's enough to make you wonder how many of these young startups will eventually survive. Unidesk, which is known for combining point tools in one comprehensive solution that makes life way easier for VDI users, looks to be in the mix of companies that will establish themselves as serious players.
Not only is Unidesk surviving, but it is also thriving, if awards from MIT's Sloan CIO Symposium mean anything. In recognition of its technical elegance, Unidesk was named one of 10 finalists in the 8th annual MIT Sloan CIO Symposium Innovation Showcase, for demonstrating the highest potential to help CIOs drive top-line growth and bottom-line results. Several rounds of evaluation were done by Innovation Showcase judges in order to reach the top 10. Those judges are composed of MIT faculty, early-stage investors and entrepreneurs. All 10 companies will be highlighted at the symposium's Innovation Showcase May 18 at 6 p.m. in the Kresge courtyard tent on the MIT campus.
All 10 finalists had to meet three criteria: They were required to be selling enterprise IT solutions to CIO-level executives, they had to demonstrate both innovation and the potential to impact both top and bottom lines, and they had to be startups with under $10 million in 2010 revenues (the easy part).
The other nine finalists are Apperian (mobile application management), CloudBees (PaaS-based building, testing and deploying Java Web apps in the cloud), Hadapt (performs cloud-based complex analytics on structured and unstructured data), Modo Labs (mobile software), Opscode (cloud infrastructure automation), Performable (marketing software), Rypple (social interface software), Virtual Bridges, (combined online, offline and remote branch VDI solutions for virtual desktop access) and xPeerient (changing modes of buying and selling enterprise technology).
Posted by Bruce Hoard on 04/19/2011 at 12:48 PM