SnapVolumes, Inc., a new company focused on application lifecycle
management in virtual, cloud and physical environments, has emerged from
stealth mode today with an angel investment of $2.3 million from
well-known industry executives. Founded by virtualization, Windows
kernel and security experts, Matthew Conover, Shaun Coleman and Matthieu
Suiche, SnapVolumes focuses on the issues of supporting a mixed
environment of virtual desktops, servers and cloud computing while fully
leveraging the virtual infrastructure.
As more companies move to the cloud, IT departments are struggling to
adapt their enterprise applications to the dynamic and elastic nature of
cloud computing. Traditional tools that managed applications in the
world of physical servers and desktops are ill-suited for virtual
environments. This leads to substantial overhead and costs associated
with application deployment, support, management, storage and
infrastructure. A recent analyst report predicts a virtualization
management gap in excess of $100 billion and growing at an unprecedented
rate, increasing pressure on IT and the need for automating application
deployment and management. To address market needs, SnapVolumes has
developed an entirely new approach to enterprise application life-cycle
management that takes full advantage of virtualization and modern
storage technologies such as SSD. SnapVolumes supports all server,
desktop and custom/legacy applications without requiring streaming,
packaging, or sequencing and is far more robust than current layering
solutions.
SnapVolumes is led by CEO Raj Parekh, former CEO of Virident and CTO/VP,
Engineering at Sun Microsystems. SnapVolumes has already attracted top
engineering talent from VMware, Citrix, EMC, Symantec, Microsoft and
Trend Micro. The SnapVolumes Board of Directors is drawn from business
leaders and technologists with extensive experience in virtualization
and cloud computing, and include Henrik Rosendahl, successful serial
entrepreneur and CEO of Thinstall (acquired by VMware in 2008); Klaus
Oestermann, Group VP, GM of Cloud Networking at Citrix Systems; and,
Prashant Shah, former Managing Director at Hummer Winblad Venture
Partners. Participants in the angel round include TiE Angels of Silicon
Valley and industry executives and visionaries such as the founder and
former CTO of Brocade Kumar Malavalli, SVP of Technology at SAP Labs
Sanjog Gad, and the CEO of Infoblox Robert Thomas. Executives from
Symantec, EMC, Citrix, and TIBCO also participated in the round.
“SnapVolumes has the potential to fundamentally change the way that
enterprise desktops, server and cloud platforms are managed,” said Simon
Bramfitt, founder and principal analyst with Entelechy Associates. “The
ability for IT to easily adapt their enterprise applications to the
dynamic and elastic nature of cloud computing is a remarkable benefit.
SnapVolumes technology is the closest thing to magic I’ve ever seen.”
“The opportunities for SnapVolumes from both a technology and
partnership perspective are exciting, and I look forward to being
involved with such a distinguished team and group of advisors,” said
Rosendahl, Chairman of the Board, SnapVolumes. “My experience at
Thinstall and VMware in application delivery and virtualization provided
me with unique insight into the issues that can arise in a converged
infrastructure environment. I believe SnapVolumes is in a strong
position to help solve these new-world data center challenges.”
SnapVolumes’ executive team brings extensive experience in
virtualization and software development:
-
Chief Executive Officer Raj Parekh – co-founded Virident
Systems in 2006 and served as CEO and Chairman. A well-respected
technologist, Raj has been a member of the senior business and
technology executive teams of high technology companies including Sun
Microsystems as CTO and Vice President of Engineering of all system
products, and as Vice President and General Manager of Java products
for Sun Microsystems. Before joining Sun, Raj was Vice President and
General Manager at Silicon Graphics managing all chip development
including “Geometry Engine” and several system products. Raj also
co-founded Redwood Ventures served as Executive Managing Partner and
Chairman. Raj has served as board member and/or Chairman of the board
at more than 15 high tech companies, including Magma, Niksun,
Pranalytica, eGtran, Virident, TiE Angels, PubNub and Aspex. He holds
11 issued patents.
-
Chief Technology Officer and Founder Matthew Conover –
former Technical Director for Symantec Research Labs, where he was a
major contributor to the company’s virtualization strategy. Prior to
his eight years at Symantec, Conover held various research and
engineering roles at Network Associates and BindView. As an early
pioneer in the field of Windows security his research has been cited
in numerous publications such as “Writing Secure Code” by Microsoft
Press. He holds 16 issued patents.
-
Vice President of Products/Marketing and Founder Shaun Coleman
– formerly Director of Product Management for Citrix XenDesktop,
Coleman has also worked at VMware where he was the first hire in the
desktop virtualization group where he managed the first releases of
VDI/VMware View. He founded the security startup company Reconnex
(acquired in 2008 by McAfee) and has held various senior management
positions at Proofpoint, RSA Data Security, Lawrence Livermore
National Labs, and Sandia National Labs. Coleman holds 4 issued
patents.
-
Chief Scientist and Founder Matthieu Suiche – As one of
the youngest Microsoft MVPs, he is a well-respected Windows OS and
security expert. He also worked as a researcher at the Netherlands
Forensic Institute (Dutch Nederlands Forensisch Instituut) as part
of the Dutch Ministry of Security and Justice, has worked for the
European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company, and contributed to the
Samba open source project.
“Running many virtual machines on a single server has greatly reduced
the number of physical servers needed, giving an enormous CAPEX savings.
However, OPEX continues to increase proportional to total number of
VMs,” said Parekh. “The problem of application management is obviously
in need of a new solution. Without that, the ever expanding
virtualization management gap will simply stall cloud momentum. Such a
solution must be fully automated, fit seamlessly with all clouds,
hypervisors, operating systems and apps. It must be secure, easy to use
and fit with existing tools from major players like VMware, Citrix, Dell
and Microsoft. There exists no such product in the market today with
these attributes. At SnapVolumes, we are developing a patent-pending
solution to address critical issues, reduce CIO headaches and save
millions of dollars in operational expenses ‘in a snap.’ Due to the size
of the opportunity and urgent need from customers, we plan to form key
partnerships with industry leaders as we complement their solutions.”
For more information about SnapVolumes and their new beta program,
contact info@snapvolumes.com
or call 888-369-5597 or go to www.snapvolumes.com.
Follow SnapVolumes on the web at:
About SnapVolumes
SnapVolumes was founded in early 2011 to provide IT with a new approach
to enterprise application life-cycle management that takes full
advantage of virtualization, supports legacy applications, eliminates
the need for re-architecting or rewriting existing software, and works
with existing management solutions. The company is headquartered in Los
Altos, California. For more information, visit http://www.snapvolumes.com.
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