Cloud management startup StrataCloud, a company that helps manage VMware-based data center environments, raised $2 million in seed funding to enhance its marketing strategies, also announcing the appointment of ex-HP alum Brian Cohen as its chief executive officer. The round was led by Hallett Capital, with participation from BLH Venture Partners also.
Brian Cohen, who was previously president and CEO at SPI Dynamics, which he sold to HP in 2007, explains, “We track the data, collect the data ourselves, and we use our own compression algorithms that allow us to store more data efficiently.” StrataCloud can then predict the resources that applications would require in the future, based in historical data, thus providing better computing services to their client applications.
“The virtual environment changes dynamically, once every five minutes, ten minutes or an hour, so many things happen,” said Cohen. “StrataCloud takes a snapshot once every 20 seconds.”
Cohen enunciates that management work in certain companies is based on averages, wherein if the virtual environment performs 10 percent of the time at 10 percent efficiency and 100 percent at 90 percent of the time then the average still drops to somewhere in the 90s; its a bad output for that 10 percent of the time.
Even with data center management startups such as Platform9 and StackStorm picking up valuable funding, Cohen believes that StrataCloud’s direct competitors include virtualization giant VMware, which ships its vCenter operation management software.
StrataCloud intends to utilise the new funding to make initial investment in sales and marketing and a few key hires for the engineering team. Based in Atlanta, and started in April, StrataCloud acquired the technology assets of Reflex Systems, which brought in measurable advantages in engineering and products. With 25 employees presently, it plans on expanding its workforce in the near future. StrataCloud uses a direct sales business model and will have a cloud-based offering soon, Cohen said.
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(Image Credit: Danja Vasiliev)
