Some of our readers may have noted that the virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Radar has been expanded recently, with the addition of several new companies in multiple areas, like Kaviza in the Hardware Virtualization | Connection Broker category, Unidesk in the Application Virtualization | Platforms category, C12G Labs and Eucalyptus Systems in the Hardware Virtualization | Platform Management category.
Today we add another market player: the Canadian startup VM6 Software.
The company was co-founded in 2004 by Claude Goudreault, CEO, and Eric Courville, COO.
Goudreault has a past as Senior IT Architect for large companies like General Electrics and Rogers, while Courville has been the Vice President of Sales & Business Development for PlateSpin first (from 2004 to 2007) and for Embotics then (from 2007 to 2009).
With them there’s at least another former member of the original PlateSpin team: Kirsten Foon, Director of Marketing. Foon was the Online Marketing Program Manager before Novell acquired PlateSpin.
On top of that, VM6 Software appointed Stephen Pollack, the founder and former CEO of PlateSpin, as a board advisor in November 2009.
The company secured its first round funding in April: a $4M investment led by RBC Venture Partners and Ignition Partners.
The VM6 Software flagship product, called VMex, is a rather unique proposition in the virtualization market: evidently targeting the SMB segment, this is an all-in-one virtual infrastructure for server consolidation and VDI that leverages Microsoft Hyper-V.
VMex builds four modules on top of Hyper-V: the virtual shared storage (simulating a real SAN with quota management and thin provisioning), the high-availability component (through an active/active cluster that uses the virtual SAN and guarantees a 99.99% uptime), the VDI connection broker and of course the virtual infrastructure management.
VMex also leverages the Windows Microsoft Management Console (MMC) and Active Directory, to provide a self-contained virtual infrastructure in a box.
Again: this builds on top of the Hyper-V version included in Windows Server 2008 R2 and doesn’t require any Microsoft additional piece, like System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM), or 3rd party products.
Ten days ago the company released VMex 2.1, which introduces a VDI session manager that allows users to view session state or reset sessions, a new dashboard to administer the virtual storage component, a new high availability technology and support for event monitoring by email.
VM6 Software has been included in the virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Radar.