How Nutanix is Disrupting the Market for Datacenter Infrastructure and Storage August 22, 2012
Posted by ravimhatre in 2012, datacenter, Infrastructure, virtualization.Tags: 2012, appliance, converged, data center, datacenter, enterprise IT, funding news, infrastructure, Nutanix, storage, virtualization, vmware
2 comments
Over the past two years we’ve seen a lot of disruption in the enterprise storage market with everything from the game-changing performance of flash to next-generation storage architectures required to support the cloud and virtualized data center environments
And notwithstanding some early wins from companies like Fusion-io, we believe the underlying data center compute, storage and networking transformation is still in early innings of playing out. A case in point is Nutanix, a company worth paying attention to and one where we recently led an oversubscribed growth round of financing.
So why are we so excited about Nutanix? We believe the company represents the next-generation of IT infrastructure – a CONVERGED storage and compute platform uniquely able to cost-effectively power the datacenters of today and tomorrow.
Nutanix combines enterprise-class compute and storage resources into a single, inexpensive x86 system. It also incorporates elastic scale-out technologies that have historically only been available to some of the world’s largest, and most technically sophisticated companies like Google and Facebook. Now, for the first time, this revolutionary computing paradigm is being delivered to mid-range and large enterprises that are also looking to ride the disruptive economic wave afforded by cloud computing and large-scale virtualization.
The Nutanix magic is in its’ software which is highly sophisticated and delivers the world’s first SDS (Software-defined Storage system), similar to Nicira, also a LIghtspeed portfolio company, which built the world’s first SDN (Software Defined Network system). The combination of SDS, inexpensive compute, and a radically simplified appliance form factor which is easy to deploy and manage has customers excited and highly engaged. They are calling Nutanix Complete the world’s first “datacenter in a box.”
Beyond the technology, we have been hugely impressed by the team at Nutanix. We’ve had the privilege of working with them from the earliest days of the company when Lightspeed originally lead the Series A financing more than two and half years ago. The founders came to us with an extremely bold vision to redefine datacenter storage and computing and we’re incredibly excited to see how emphatically the market is now embracing this vision.
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Nutanix launches and a new era for data center computing is born — No SAN or NAS required! August 16, 2011
Posted by ravimhatre in 2011, Cloud Computing, data, database, datacenter, enterprise infrastructure, Infrastructure, platforms, Portfolio Company blogs, startup, startups, Storage, Uncategorized.Tags: data center, datacenter, nas, san, storage, virtualization, vmware
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The Nutanix team (ex-Googlers, VMWare, and Asterdata alums) have been quietly working to create the world’s first high-performance appliance that enables IT to deploy a complete data center environment (compute, storage, network) from a single 2U appliance.
The platform also scales to much larger configurations with zero downtime or admin changes and users can run a broard array of mixed workloads from mail/print/file servers to databases to back-office applications without having to make upfront decisions about where or how to allocate their scare hardware resources.
For the first time an IT administrator in a small or mid-sized company or a branch office can plug in his or her virtual data center and be up/running in a matter of minutes.
Some of the most disruptive elements of Nutanix’s technology which enable the customer to avoid expensive SAN and NAS investments typically required for true data center computing are aptly described on company’s blog – http://www.nutanix.com/blog/.
Take a look. We believe this represents the beginning of the next generation in data center computing.
Amazon’s EBS Will Push Enterprise Apps to the Cloud August 22, 2008
Posted by John Vrionis in Cloud Computing, Infrastructure.2 comments
Amazon announced Thursday that its Elastic Block Store (EBS) feature is now available to all of its EC2 Web service customers. This is a big deal. The move rounds out Amazon’s offering and provides a full storage suite that is delivered as a service.
S3 and EC2 previously combined to be Amazon’s storage and compute services but lacked many of the critical elements needed to push enterprise class applications to the cloud. The previous holes didn’t matter much for non mission critical applications or batch jobs, but they were prohibitive for enterprise customers who need flexibility in the software stack and guaranteed service levels. With EBS, Amazon is sending a strong message and hosting providers should take notice – the Ecommerce giant is planning to be a significant player in the fight to offer cloud services to enterprise customers.
According to Amazon CTO, Werner Vogels, adding the Elastic Block Store offers customers “persistent, high-performance, high-availability block-level storage which you can attach to a running instance of EC2.” Vogels goes into further detail about the components of Amazon’s offering in his blog.
EBS volumes, which range from 1GB to 1TB, can be mounted as a file system or as raw storage. What this means is that customers can now deploy applications that work with any number of relational databases or file systems, not just the software stack specified by the cloud vendor (an example would be SimpleDB in Amazon’s case). This is critical to enterprise class customers because they are not going to lock themselves into a niche technology just to work with a certain service provider, while startups have been more willing to deal with this constraint because the cloud offered such a cost effective way to get an app up and running.
The EBS upgrade is a major move towards offering enterprise developers the flexible and reliable infrastructure they absolutely must have combined with the cheap and easy access to cloud resources they love. There are still plenty of questions about true reliability and performance that need to be answered before we see a massive migration, but this is a major step forward in providing the necessary building blocks.
Amazon was always going to be a tough competitor to beat on cost, but by adding flexibility and reliability to its story the implication for hosting providers is they will have to find another way to differentiate. My prediction is that we’ll see hosting providers attempting to move up the stack and looking to offer application management and monitoring solutions on top of their infrastructure as a way of separating themselves from Amazon. That’s good news for startups in that space like Singularity (a Lightspeed portfolio company), WeoCeo and Rightscale.
Pitching a VC: Focus on these FOUR things January 25, 2007
Posted by John Vrionis in Consumer internet, Digital Media, Ecommerce, Infrastructure, Security, startups, Uncategorized, Venture Capital, web 2.0, WiMax.6 comments
The best part of being a ‘VC’ is meeting passionate entrepreneurs and listening to pitches about how their idea is going to change the world. Since I joined Lightspeed, I’ve found myself meeting amazing people and debating revolutionary ideas on a daily basis.
I’ve had the opportunity to listen to hundreds of pitches and as a former entrepreneur I did my share of pitching. I firmly believe that all great plans highlight the four key areas that are at the heart of every good VCs decision process.
1. Demonstrate you are addressing a Billion dollar plus market. This is the most important thing. If you can’t convince the VC you’re solving a problem in a huge market, you’re dead in the water. Big markets make big companies. Big markets can also hide mistakes. Do the bottoms up analysis. Talk to your assumptions.
2. What is your unfair advantage? Describe this in 30 words or less. Repeat it as many times as you can in the presentation.
3. Does the team have a visionary? VC’s are NOT visionaries. The team has to have someone on it that sees where the opportunity is going to be and can pick the right products to take advantage of that market.
4. What are the capital requirements for the major milestones? VCs want to back capital efficient businesses. They want to understand what the major risks are in the busines, when they can be mitigated and how much money it takes to do it. A simple timeline with milestones compared to cash needs is one of the best slides an entrepreneur can provide.
My final comment. Have fun. Remember — your job is to inspire and compel!
As always, all comments are welcome. Or send email direct to jvrionis@lightspeedvp.com
2007 Enterprise Technology Predictions January 5, 2007
Posted by John Vrionis in Digital Media, Infrastructure, Security, startups, Storage, Venture Capital, WiMax.1 comment so far
First – Happy New Year! The Lightspeed Team is very excited about the prospects for 2007. We’re just getting rolling with our blog here and hopeful it can be a positive resource to let you know how and why we approach things the way we do.
I wanted to follow up on Jeremy’s post earlier this week 2007 Consumer Internet Predictions and share some of my thoughts regarding areas we’ll be watching closely this year. Full disclosure – I didn’t fully realize how hard blogging is. I’m really nervous! I have a lot more respect for all of you who routinely put yourself out there for the world to read about. But I do think there needs to be a lot more transparency from the VC community, so here goes…
1. Where are the NEW IDEAS in security? Despite the venture community pouring hundreds of millions into best-of-breed, segmented security solutions, it turns out customers want to buy and manage one complete, layered suite. The problem is that with 200,000 pieces of malicious code officially logged (100,000 of those appearing in the past 18 months according to McAfee’s AVERT Labs), the model for traditional anit-virus programs looks less and less exciting. The good news is that most experts finally agree that ridding software of vulnerabilities at the code level is the best defense. It would seem to me that companies such as Fortify Software and Mu Security are on the right track. So what’s next then? Mobile security is a relatively untapped (huge) opportunity. Two of the of the fastest growing things I can think of – social networking websites (Facebook and MySpace) and the proliferation of intelligent mobile devices serve as great mediums to spread malicious code – even if enterprises are well prepared!
2. Intelligent storage solutions. Talking with CIO’s from Lightspeed’s CIO Forum, I get a lot of great feedback about what the priorities are for 2007. One consistent message (complaint) I hear is regarding the explosive growth in unstructured data and the associated storage costs. Despite the continued decline in disk costs, overall storage costs as a result of needed capacity and performance, not to mention space and power, continues to be a major concern for CIOs. I’m hopeful 2007 is a year where we see more exciting new ideas about how to manage data intelligently over pure performance or blind capacity.
3. WiMax – Why not? I’m really excited about WiMax. As mentioned in a recent post by Katie on GigaOM, the mutiplayer chess match is just starting to heat up as massive players such as Sprint and Clearwire manage the infrastructure buildouts and work with the likes of Nokia and Motorola. I have this grand vision where some day there will be super cheap WiMax (only) enabled devices that are perfect for SMS, IM, sharing pictures and video, and VoIP calls. They’ll be available in vending machines and a quick password entry (or biometric signature) will instantly customize the device for your personal use (as all your information will inevitably be in the cloud). Ok – I know it’s a bit out there and I don’t think that happens in 2007 (probably not in 2008 either) but as I said, I’m excited about the possibilities that come with ubiquitous, ultra-high bandwidth.
4. Innovation for international markets. Is 2007 a watershed year in the sense US based companies start thinking about developing technologies primarily for international markets? The $100 laptop? Clearly there has complete acceptance of the idea of leveraging international talent and labor to build products for the US market (first), it will be interesting to see how global market demands influence innovation here in the US.
As always, I look forward to hearing from you. Feel free to drop me a note anytime (john@lightspeedvp.com)
EMC to Acquire Avamar Technologies November 1, 2006
Posted by lsvp in Infrastructure.1 comment so far
HOPKINTON, Mass. – November 1, 2006 – EMC Corporation, the world leader in information management and storage, today announced the signing of a definitive agreement to acquire privately-held Avamar Technologies, Inc., a fast-growing provider of enterprise-class data protection software featuring industry-leading data de-duplication technology. EMC will acquire the Irvine, California-based company in a cash transaction valued at approximately $165 million. The acquisition is expected to be completed within 30 days and is not expected to have a material impact on EMC’s revenue or EPS for 2006.
Winner of this year’s Storage magazine “Product of the Year” award for best backup and recovery software, Avamar advances EMC’s core strengths in information protection and recovery management, radically changing the way customers protect their data and accelerating the widespread move from tape to disk-based recovery solutions.
See the full press release here.
Riverbed Technology, Inc. Announces IPO September 21, 2006
Posted by lsvp in Infrastructure.add a comment
SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Sept. 21, 2006–Riverbed Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq:RVBD) today announced an initial public offering of 8.7 million shares of its common stock at a price of $9.75 per share. Riverbed has also granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to approximately 1.3 million additional shares. Riverbed’s common stock will be listed on the Nasdaq Global Market under the symbol “RVBD” and will begin trading Thursday, September 21, 2006.
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