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Stealth “Laptop Virtualization” Company Virtual Computer Readying Launch

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Mass High Tech is reporting on a new virtualization startup, currently in stealth mode, who is readying a public launch in the field of ‘laptop virtualization’ (for lack of a better term).

Update – per their blog: they’ve launched.

Westford-based Old Road Computing plans to publicly launch as Virtual Computer Inc., but isn’t revealing many specifics about its virtualization product, nor when it will be released. The company was founded in 2007 by Alex Vasilevsky (ex-CTO and founder of Virtual Iron) and Dan McCall (former Verisign executive and well-known consultant), both 25+ year veterans of the Boston technology community. The company is funded by top tier investors including Highland Capital Partners and Flybridge Capital Partners (formerly IDG Ventures, Boston). To date, it has raised $6 million in a Series A round of financing.

The software would be designed to isolate a laptop’s four major components — hardware, operating system, applications and user data — and create versions on the laptop of those components that operate remotely, without a network connection. The software would operate transparently for the user and it would enable wholesale security updates and other types of upgrades when connected to the network. Isolating the portions of the system enables it to limit access to work-related applications while enabling users to install their own personal preferences on the device.

Virtual Computer (blog) is targeting laptops because that segment is growing faster than stationary desktops, according to the company.

PHD Technologies Officially Announces Funding Round, Fails To Share Any Details

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Remember last week when we reported on PHD Technologies, provider of the esXPRESS backup and restoration solution for virtualized infrastructures, announcing the appointment of Sridhar Murthy as the company’s CEO?

The press release also mentioned a fresh funding round, but was scarce on details. Today, the company decided to let us in on the questions we all ask when a new investment in a virtualization company is made: who decided to invest, and how much?

Except you won’t find any answers in their newest official press release either, except for the fact that it concerns “an equity investment from a top tier venture capital firm”. The rest of the press release was the usual marketingese, but I really wondered why PHD Technologies decided it was worth sending a press release containing absolutely no new information whatsoever?

SplashTop Maker DeviceVM Raises $15 Million in Series C Funding Round

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DeviceVM, maker of the Splashtop instant-on environment, announced today a $15 million Series C round of funding led by venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates. Existing investors including Storm Ventures, DFJ Dragon, Tim Draper, and Larry Augustin also participated in this Series C investment, demonstrating continued commitment to DeviceVM’s growth.

“Splashtop is a game-changing product in the personal computing space,” said NEA partner Peter Sonsini, who previously led NEA’s investment in XenSource (acquired by Citrix Systems), and was an executive at VMware prior to joining NEA. “We are excited to invest in a revolutionary product and a team like DeviceVM.”

Warren Lazarow and Paul Sieben of O’Melveny & Myers LLP represented DeviceVM in the transaction.

DeviceVM

Will Unidesk Bring Anything New to the VDI Table?

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VMBlog is reporting that a new desktop virtualization management startup called Unidesk is about to break out of stealth mode. (note: the Unidesk website is still under construction as some titles and text snippets appear to be missing)

Founded in December of last year, Unidesk raised a total of $8.1 million this year from Matrix Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners. It has a strong management team, and recently opened up a second office in India next to their existing Marlborough offices. Their core offers are named “Composite Virtualization“ and “Desktop Management 2.0” and they claim it will dramatically simplify desktop management for enterprise IT organizations.

“Building on a core invention called Composite Virtualization™, Unidesk will offer IT organizations the desktop control they’ve been seeking to reduce costs, improve service levels, and tighten security, while, at the same time, give lines of business the desktop freedom they require to maximize knowledge worker innovation and productivity. Unidesk’s family of “Desktop Management 2.0™” solutions will provide the highly efficient image management, application delivery, and personalization capabilities that are currently missing from Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) products from VMware and Citrix, and extend these same capabilities to non-VDI-based laptops and thick desktops so IT can easily support off-network computing. By eliminating the barriers to VDI adoption and enabling all desktops to be virtualized under a common management platform, Unidesk’s game-changing technology will accelerate the multi-billion dollar desktop virtualization market, and deliver significant returns to employees, investors, customers, and business partners.”

There’s not much else we can gather from the website, apart from the fact that the company is planning a free trial version, and that they’re hiring a bunch of people who will get – at least- a free mug (see here).

Unidesk

Elastra Raises $12 Million from Amazon for Cloud Management

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Elastra, a startup focused on providing solutions for internet cloud configuration and management, secured $12 million in Series B financing in its second venture round, which was was led by Bay Partners, with Amazon.com and existing investor Hummer Winblad also participating. Elastra had previously raised $2.6 million. If the investment by Amazon makes you raise your eyebrows too, go read the excellent analysis on GigaOM.

Check our previous coverage of the company here.

CEO Kiril Sheynkman says Elastra’s offering is unique because it can manage individual applications, rather than virtual appliances, and because it manages applications across private and public Internet clouds.

Elastra now has more than 40 paying customers running databases on Amazon’s cloud using its technology, and plans to announce support for VMware and additional components such as application and web servers. It’s also planning to support clouds other than Amazon.

Elastra

[Source: VentureBeat]

InstallFree Secures $8.5 Million in VC Funding

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InstallFree, a provider of Dynamic Desktop Computing, today announced (PDF) it has received $8.5 Million in financing to drive the expansion of its product development and go-to-market teams. This round of financing was led by venture capital firms Ignition Partners and Trilogy Equity Partners. Richard Fade and John Connors of Ignition Partners and Peter van Oppen and Chuck Stonecipher of Trilogy Equity Partners will join InstallFree’s Board of Directors. The round follows a first round of financing of $1.7 Million secured in November 2007.

InstallFree launched its first product in April 2008. The company’s solutions improve IT operational efficiency and increase end-user productivity by eliminating the need to install software applications thus overcoming application conflicts and enabling the delivery of incremental changes on-the-fly and on-demand. All of this occurs without changing the organization’s existing infrastructure. With InstallFree, end-users can access their complete set of personal applications from any computer and work anywhere without limitations, while enjoying local application processing and offline availability—without undermining the IT department’s centralized management capabilities.

Dynamic Desktop Computing is a platform that enables organizations to centrally deploy and manage Windows client applications to end-users in a stateless, flexible and cost-efficient manner across a variety of end-user scenarios such as the office, home or on the road. InstallFree presents an elegant solution, changing application and desktop virtualization from a one-off solution to a standard method of deploying and managing software applications throughout a company’s entire corporate infrastructure.

InstallFree