Virtualization Companies To Watch at VMworld 2013
At VMworld 2013, the crowded exhibit floor will have vendors hawking their wares like carnival barkers. But where should you go? Who should you vist? There are so many vendors, there is so much going on that what I see most people doing is going from booth to booth collecting as many gadgets and t-shirts as they can get their hands on.
But, really, folks! You are there to learn, explore and uncover new technologies, but with all that clutter how do you identify and plan your attack on the Solutions Expo?
I am definitely keeping an eye on the usual suspects, including but not limited to EMC, NetApp, Veeam, HDS, Cisco, and others. In addition to them, I have identified a list of vendors that I will be seeking out either for the first time or because they have a a big announcement to make. Here is what I came up with:
Tintri -- These guys have been making a splash everywhere and have shown a truly impressive year over year growth. I have always been a fan of the Tintri solution and I am heading over to that booth to learn about the latest and greatest that they have to offer. Tintri is an NFS based storage array built for VMware with an impressive array of management tools.
FSLogix -- This company came out of stealth mode last week. Co-founded by Kevin Goodman who is an ex-VMware guy and also the CEO of RTOsoft, which developed the infamous Virtual Profiles product later acquired by VMware. Kevin is back with an interesting application management product aimed primarily at breaking down Citrix/RDS silos but also at managing applications that are installed on the master image.
Nutanix -- Still my favorite converged vendor, I heard that Nutanix is making a splash at VMworld with some major announcements. Nutanix's claim to fame was initially with VDI and while they remain an extremely solid option there, I'm more interested in seeing Nutanix evolve to tackle software-defined storage and start to highlight the private cloud and software-defined datacenter even more.
PernixData -- They have an interesting solution that I've yet to check out more closely. In short, what they do appears to be very similar to what Atlantis Computing is doing, except they take a more vritualized approach by virtualizing Flash and presenting it as a shareable resource to speed up application performance. I have always liked Atlantis, so I am definitely keen on checking PernixData as well and see how they compare.
Panzura -- Probably the most exciting vendor of all for me this year, Panzura is offering a cloud-based globally distributed storage controller that allows any user access to any file any time from anywhere. It's like Citrix but for storage -- well, that is how they come across to me. Panzura wants to bring the benefits of local NAS to a globally distributed enterprise. I can see this play out in so many different solutions for my customers.
Those are my picks and I welcome your comments if I have missed any interesting vendors.
Posted by Elias Khnaser on 08/07/2013 at 4:14 PM