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VKernel Scores $7 Million Series B Round

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VKernel Corporation, a provider of easy-to-use and quick-to-deploy virtual server management and optimization solutions, today announced it has closed a $7 million Series B round of funding. The latest round was led by Longworth Venture Partners and joined by prior investors Hummer Winblad Venture Partners and Polaris Venture Partners. The new funding will be used to accelerate sales, marketing, and product development efforts to capitalize on the rapidly growing server virtualization management market.

The VKernel suite of next-generation virtual server management and optimization solutions is designed to solve real world data center challenges that are impacting IT departments. VKernel leverages the virtual appliance format to instantly deploy its products for enhancing performance, lowering operational and capital costs, optimizing virtual environments of all sizes, and delivering instant ROI. Currently, VKernel supports VMware ESX and plans to support Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix XEN, and others. The company’s current products include:

  • Capacity Analyzer — proactively and predicatively monitor shared capacity resources to prevent current and future problems and optimize the environment
  • Chargeback — provide instant cost visibility and implement a chargeback processes
  • Modeler — quickly test and validate additions and changes to see the performance impact on the environment before going live
  • SearchMyVM — free “Google-like” search utility quickly finds information in virtual environments
  • CompareMyVM — a free community website tool allows visitors to exchange and compare virtual machine (VM) resource allocations with that of the community at large
  • SnapshotMyVM — free tool that completely automates the time-consuming process of documenting the virtual data center

Nilanjana Bhowmik, Partner at Longworth Venture Partners, and Doug McNary, the former CEO of Onaro (acquired by NetApp in 2008) and past executive vice president at Motive and Tivoli, have joined the VKernel Board of Directors.

FastScale Lands $5.5 million Series B Financing

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FastScale Technology today announced that it has secured $5.5 million in a Series B funding round led by ATA Ventures and joined by prior investors Leapfrog Ventures, Hunt Ventures as well as a new strategic corporate investor. The company’s last round of financing occurred in late 2006, shortly before the launch of their flagship product, FastScale Composer Suite.

FastScale’s technology enables data centers to respond to constantly changing business requirements, server workloads, and server hardware with a server software platform that dramatically increases agility while significantly reducing day-to-day operating complexity and cost – whether the data center is virtualized, not virtualized or a hybrid of the two. The ground-breaking technology is the only solution on the market to fully automate the process of building, managing and deploying heterogeneous server software environments with compact software environments built on-demand, automatic patch and configuration management, lightweight provisioning in only seconds, and an enterprise-class repository for lifecycle management.

FastScale software environments average 95% smaller than traditional images, dramatically decrease memory requirements, and increase virtual server density by 300% or more. With FastScale’s solution, the entire server infrastructure, both physical and virtual, is a dynamic pool of resources able to adapt to constantly changing demands.

“FastScale’s approach to the growing issue of software complexity is breakthrough technology for data centers,” said Hatch Graham, managing director at ATA Ventures. “The technology provides an elegant way for enterprises to manage the complexity while increasing server consolidation and decreasing cost. We’ve seen what FastScale has done for customers, and it’s impressive. We look forward to working with the FastScale team to help drive the next stage of company growth.”

Skytap Taps $7 Million In Series B Financing

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Skytap today announced it completed a $7 million Series B round of funding from Ignition Partners, Madrona Venture Group and Washington Research Foundation. The funds will be used to bolster the company’s product development, sales and marketing efforts.

Skytap’s rapidly growing list of customers utilize its cloud-based virtual lab solution to augment or replace dynamic, high cost IT environments such as those used for application development and testing, IT prototyping, product demonstrations and technical training. By allowing users to scale resources on-demand and pay only for time and resources utilized, customers can immediately reduce costs, increase productivity and improve responsiveness to business demands.

Since emerging from stealth less than one year ago, Skytap has achieved strong customer traction and third-party recognition for its innovative virtual lab offering.

Hyper9 Raises $8 Million Series B Round, Mike Maples Joins Its Board

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Hyper9 has raised $8 million in a series B funding round led by Venrock, a highly respected venture capital firm. Joining Venrock were current investors Matrix Partners, Silverton Partners and Maples Investments.

Hyper9’s new breed of virtualization management technology provides virtual infrastructure administrators with the visibility they need to effectively do their job as well as provide the control that is necessary to manage such a dynamic environment. The Hyper9 product will be generally available early March, 2009.

The company also announced that Mike Maples Sr., a private investor and tech industry veteran, joined its Board of Directors. Formerly Executive Vice President of the Worldwide Products Group for Microsoft, Maples has a proven track record in advising software companies as they expand product lines and enhance business operations such as sales and marketing. Prior to Microsoft, Maples held senior positions at other market leading companies such as IBM, Lexmark, NetIQ, and Sonic restaurants.

Pano Logic Raises Follow-Up Financing To The Tune Of $6 Million

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Pano Logic today announced it has closed an extension to its Series B round of $6 million led by Foundation Capital and Goldman Sachs. This funding brings the total Series B financing to $18 million, and completes a year of expansion for Pano Logic, which experienced quarter-over-quarter growth and has received extensive industry recognition since bringing its first product to market in late 2007.

Over the course of 2008, Pano Logic has significantly increased its install base and signed more than 150 partners including one of the leading distributors, Avnet. Additionally, the Pano Virtual Desktop Solution received a SearchServerVirtualization.com Product of the Year award, the red dot 2008, and Good Design 2008 product design awards. Pano Logic was also named a finalist for the 2008 Red Herring North America 100 Awards, which recognizes startups that will lead the next wave of disruption and innovation.

Embotics Raises $4 Million From Covington Capital Corporation

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Embotics last week announced the closing of a $4 million Series B round of financing, led by Covington Capital Corporation. The financing will be used to advance product development for Embotics’ server virtualization management technology and expand global sales and operations.

Embotics’ products allow companies to manage server sprawl efficiently while mitigating risk and reducing costs. As enterprises continue to require greater insight and control over their virtualized environments, many are looking for solutions, such as Embotics’ V-Commander, to manage and control their virtual machines while fitting seamlessly into their existing technology architecture.