A new US startup, currently in semi-stealth mode, is about to enter the virtualization market: Pancetera.
The company was founded in early 2009 by four people:
- Henrik Rosendahl, the former CEO of Thinstall, acquired by VMware in January 2008
- Bart Bartlett, the former Director of Sales Operations/Marketing/Channels at Data Domain, acquired by EMC in July 2009
- Mitch Haile, a former Senior Software Engineer at Data Domain
- Greg Wade, another former Software Engineer from Data Domain
Pancetera is funded by Hummer Winblad Ventures and ONSET Ventures for an unknown amount.
Hummer Winblad already invested in Scalent and VKernel.
On top of that, Claude Robinson III appears in its advisory board. Robison was the Director of Business Development at Data Domain for over three years. After the EMC acquisition he joined Symantec as Senior Manager of Business Development, which highlight the security giant interest for the storage market.
Another key advisor sits in the board: Violet Wade, who has been Manager of Technical Support & QA at Legato, acquired by EMC in 2003, for over 10 years. Wade may or may not be connected to Brian Wade, another former Legato employee that is now a Technical Global Advisor at NetApp.
Both Robinson and Wade offer nice hints about possible exit strategies for Pancetera.
What sort of project is working on this team? It seems it is a company focused on virtual machines storage management, an area where there’s almost no competition.
But it may also mean that Pancetera will leverage the technology to offer a sort of disaster recovery product, which would mean competition with established players like Quest/Vizioncore, Veeam and of course VMware.
The minimal website in fact promises the following features:
- Changes the way you access, backup and protect your virtual machine data
- Leverages your existing enterprise backup software while eliminating lots of agents
- Reduces your primary storage load without additional servers or storage
- Installs as a virtual appliance in minutes
For sure the company’s first product, which may be called TeraCapture, is going to support VMware platforms, as confirms a job announcement where Pancetera is looking for Senior QA Engineers that are proficient in ESX administration and scripting.
The virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Radar has been updated accordingly.