Robin Wauters

Cloud Automation Solutions Provider Skytap Lands $10 Million

December 31, 2010 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Skytap, which provides cloud automation solutions for enterprises and software vendors to securely develop, test and demo cloud applications, has raised $10 million in a third round of financing, according to an SEC filing.

This brings the total amount of financing raised by the company to $23 million.

Skytap enables users to run enterprise applications in the cloud, collaborate with global teams and gain business productivity. Additionally, IT organizations can gain visibility and control over cloud projects, align capacity with demand and reduce costs.

Enterprises can also connect Skytap to their data centers and create virtual private clouds.

(Source: TechCrunchIT)

Rapid7 Expands Board With Industry Vet Christopher Young, Releases NeXpose 4.10

December 21, 2010 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Rapid7, provider of unified vulnerability management and penetration testing solutions, has appointed former RSA executive and VMware Vice President and General Manager Christopher Young to its board of directors.

Young previously served as senior vice president of RSA products, where during his six-year tenure he built RSA’s identity protection and verification business, led the company’s global engineering, product management and product marketing organizations, and was responsible for the strategy and delivery of RSA’s entire product portfolio.

Young joined VMware this past September to lead the company’s newly formed end-user computing business unit.

In related news, Rapid7 today announced NeXpose 4.10, the latest version of its vulnerability management solution.

NeXpose 4.10 provides operational efficiency and reporting with new features such as dynamic asset groups, advanced asset reporting filters, expansion of supported authentication methods and industry-leading detection with more than 61,000 vulnerability checks.

Rackspace Acquires Server Management Platform Startup Cloudkick

December 20, 2010 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Hosting company Rackspace is acquiring startup Cloudkick, which offers a server management system to businesses. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Cloudkick, based in San Francisco, boasts more than 1,500 customers and has more than 1 million servers pass through its tools.

In the coming months, Cloudkick’s offering will be integrated into the Rackspace family of products.

And for some good news:

To “kick” things off, starting today, all basic monitoring checks (HTTP, HTTPS, PING/ICMP, SSH, DNS, and TCP) are now 100% free on an unlimited number of servers for all our accounts — from the free forever developer account to our 1000 server plan.

For more information, check Cloudkick’s FAQ on the topic.

(Source: TechCrunch)

Cloud Storage Startup Nasuni Raises $15 Million In Series B Financing

December 20, 2010 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Nasuni this morning announced that it has closed $15 million in Series B funding led by Flybridge Capital Partners with participation from existing investors, North Bridge Venture Partners and Sigma Partners, who led the company’s Series A funding in March 2009. Investment in Nasuni now totals $23 million for the two rounds.

Chip Hazard, a General Partner at Flybridge Capital Partners, has been named to the Nasuni Board of Directors. Jeffrey P. McCarthy, Partner at North Bridge, and Paul Flanagan, Managing Director with Sigma Partners, represent the current investors.

Nasuni develops the Nasuni Filer, a file server that leverages the cloud to change the way companies store their files. The Nasuni Filer runs as a virtual appliance and can be downloaded for free.

It delivers primary storage, indistinguishable from local storage, from an array of leading cloud storage providers. Now in its second generation, the Nasuni Filer eliminates lengthy file server migrations and the need for backups.

“We spent the last year building a loyal customer base and that proved invaluable during the fundraising,” said Nasuni CEO Andres Rodriguez. “We are now working with partners to leverage our sales capability. The time for utility storage has arrived and Nasuni is rushing to help companies make the transition. Chip Hazard is the kind of visionary investor who believed in that vision a decade ago. We want to delight customers by continuing to deliver a great service that radically simplifies file management.”

(Source: press release)

Dell To Buy Virtualized Storage Solutions Provider Compellent For $820 Million

December 13, 2010 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Dell has announced its intent to pick up Compellent, a provider of virtualized storage solutions with automated data management features, for $27.75 per share in cash for each share of Compellent (that’s a total equity value of approximately $960 million).

The aggregate purchase price is about $820 million, net of Compellent’s cash.

With the acquisition, Dell aims to broaden its portfolio of enterprise-class storage solutions:

The acquisition of Compellent will deliver on Dell’s commitment to provide its customers solutions that are open, capable and affordable. Dell delivers an open and integrated approach to data management that drives efficiency and dramatically reduces costs by streamlining operations.

The transaction, which has been approved by both companies’ boards but is still subject to approval by Compellent’s shareholders and customary closing conditions, is expected to close in early 2011.

Dell recently lost a bidding war for storage company 3PAR, against HP.