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Seanodes Is Doing Ok, Thank You For Asking

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Seanodes (earlier coverage), the creator and developer of Shared Internal Storage solutions, today announced strong growth and better-than-expected results for the first three quarters of 2008, with major customer wins, securing new funding and multiple industry awards for its Exanodes storage software.

Seanodes recently raised $2.4 million in funding from OSEO, France’s national agency for industrial innovation, in the form of a no-interest loan to support ongoing technology development and company growth. This latest funding will enable Seanodes to expand its R&D efforts and extend the Shared Internal Storage platform to VMware and Microsoft operating environments.

Recent customer wins include SMB customer Pack Solutions, one of France’s financial advisor firms, which chose Seanodes based on the reliability and high data availability of the architecture, and ServiSMART, a Portugal-based emerging service provider, which selected Seanodes to provide the virtualized storage platform for its new cloud computing infrastructure. Additionally, NASA’s infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC), at the California Institute of Technology, selected Exanodes software to be part of an upgraded enterprise network architecture designed to process and store massive amounts of spectroscopy and imaging data generated by the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF), a four year project established to perform nightly scans of the skies to capture any new, undiscovered objects.

The company has scored several industry awards from leading technology publications:

  • Computer Reseller News included Seanodes in its “Emerging Tech Vendors,” the magazine’s annual list of channel-friendly companies that are recognized for providing superior technology, support and margins over more-established companies in today’s information technology industry.
  • Exanodes was named “Storage Virtualization Product of the Year” by Techworld, calling it “true innovation within the IT industry.”
  • eWeek chose Shared Internal Storage as one of the “10 Disruptive New Storage Technologies Promise Big Changes.” The publication recognized Seanodes for its “ground-breaking” storage software and proclaimed SIS as one of the “technologies that have emerged recently to set the industry on its ear.”
  • Network Products Guide named Exanodes Virtual Machine Edition a winner of the 2008 Best Products and Services Award. This respected annual award honors products and services that represent the rapidly changing needs and interests of the end-users of technology worldwide.

3Leaf Systems Scores $35 Million in Series C Funding

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3Leaf Systems (previous coverage), a provider of virtualization solutions for enterprise data centers, today announced that it has secured new financing from a suite of blue-chip investors led by LSI Corporation with follow on investments by Alloy Ventures, Enterprise Partners Venture Capital, Intel Capital, and Storm Ventures.

3Leaf Systems says it will use the new capital to accelerate development of the company’s virtualization solutions and to expand sales and marketing activities.

Using 3Leaf’s products, enterprise data centers can dramatically increase their resource utilization and enhance their operational efficiency. The 3Leaf V-8000 Virtual I/O Server has been named a Best of VMworld award winner at VMworld 2007 for its innovation, value, performance, reliability and ease of use.

3Leaf Systems

[Source: Data Center Knowledge]

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

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]