Strike while the virtual iron is hot, the saying might go.
With shares of server “virtualization” vendor VMware Inc. up 60 percent in its first six weeks as a publicly traded company, a Shelton VMware consultancy is quietly planning to triple in size in the next year.
Howard Pavony raised $10 million in August from Massachusetts venture finance firms Commonwealth Capital Ventures and Sigma Partners, using the proceeds to purchase and recapitalize Computer Resolutions Inc., a longtime VMware consultancy in Shelton.
The new CRI Technologies Inc. has 30 employees today, but the company”™s new CEO expects to add between 45 and 70 more during the next year.
The heady projections are driven by the increasing mainstream adoption of virtualization software that allows network administrators to manage a range of machines from a single computer screen, simplifying the task of monitoring data centers. That in turn might encourage companies to accelerate a migration away from “big iron” mainframe computers that centralize data, but are expensive to maintain.
Founded just a decade ago, VMware is on pace for better than $1 billion in sales this year, double its level a year ago and ranking it among the largest 75 information technology companies in the world according to statistics compiled by Software Magazine.
Besides offerings from IBM Corp. and Microsoft Corp., VMware competitors include Virtual Iron Software Inc. of Lowell, Mass.; SWsoft Inc. of Herndon, Va.; and perhaps most significantly XenSource Inc., an open-source virtualization vendor being acquired for $500 million by Citrix Systems Inc. of Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Last month, VMware itself acquired Dunes Technologies, a Swiss company with software to automate the virtualization process, which only in March chose Stamford for its U.S. headquarters.
Pavony believes the proliferation of vendors makes independent consultancies a vital piece of the puzzle, as the technology moves increasingly into smaller companies that have not been customers of VMware or EMC Corp., the Massachusetts storage computing giant that spun out VMware as an independent company in August.
“(EMC professional services) are really vamped for the Citibanks ”¦ or the Merrill Lynches of the world,” Pavony said. “There was really no large (independent) organization that had grown into a major player for the East Coast.”
Pavony aims to make CRI that company, and he does not lack inspiration: CRI backer Sigma Partners is an investor in GlassHouse Technologies Inc., a Framingham, Mass., firm that has grown to more than 450 employees as an independent consultant on storage computer platforms from companies like EMC.
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GlassHouse has grown via acquisitions, and Pavony is no stranger to that strategy; previously he was CEO of MTM Technologies Inc., a Stamford company that consults on a range of information technologies, including virtualization.
Besides CRI and MTM, other authorized VMware consultancies based in Fairfield County include:
Ӣ Ash Creek Enterprises Inc. of Fairfield;
Ӣ Desktop Guerillas of Stamford;
Ӣ Flagship Networks of Greenwich;
Ӣ LANStatus L.L.C. of Trumbull;
Ӣ New England Computer Group Inc. of Ridgefield;
Ӣ PC Pal Global of Norwalk;
Ӣ Precision Computer Services Inc. of Shelton;
Ӣ RKA Associates L.L.C. of Stamford; and
Ӣ TigerNet Systems of Stamford.
Even as VMware sales rise on the strength of virtualization technology, Gartner Inc. analyst Cameron Haight says that in order to thrive the company needs to consider transforming itself into a major, multifaceted systems-management vendor. Stamford-based Gartner believes the next big thing to be virtualization of desktop computers to allow machines to run multiple operating systems simultaneously. Xensource”™s soon-to-be-owner Citrix this summer invested in Desktone Inc., a Chelmsford, Mass., company. Pavony anticipates positioning CRI for upcoming virtualization changes via Desktone software.
“We are really trying to build a very focused ecosystem around all the things virtualization can do,” Pavony said.
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