What's become of 2008's 10 IT management start-ups to watch, Part 2

Industry analysis by Beth Schultz, plus the latest news headlines.

The 10 companies profiled in 2008 for having the potential of a bright future at the start of an economic downturn prove they earned the recognition with product upgrades, partnerships and profits.

10 IT management technology start-ups to watch

10 technologies from 2009’s IT management start-ups to watch

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The 10 companies profiled in 2008 for having the potential of a bright future at the start of an economic downturn prove they earned the recognition with product upgrades, partnerships and profits.

10 IT management technology start-ups to watch

10 technologies from 2009’s IT management start-ups to watch

Start-ups aim to tame management complexity

Here is a brief look at what the remaining five 2008’s IT management start-ups to watch accomplished since landing on Network World’s list.

New Relic

Why it made the list: New Relic came to market with veteran backing in the application performance management space. CEO Lewis Cirne headed up Wily Technology, which was considered an innovator in Java application management and now plays a large part in CA’s application performance management products. Industry watchers also pointed to the company’s penchant for cloud computing as a reason to watch its progress.

"New Relic is doing for Ruby apps what Wily did for Java apps, but with a twist. They are doing it from a cloud perspective," said Cameron Haight, research vice president at Gartner, in 2008. "Data from plug-ins on Ruby applications flows to them and they present it in a portal, which gives the company a lot of insight into this application type that hasn't seen much play in the enterprise yet."

Highlights from the last year: In the past 12 months, New Relic has quadrupled its customer base and expects to end the year with more than 3,000 customers. The company released three version of its Rails performance management, or RPM, software. The last release included the ability to monitor and manage Java applications. And New Relic introduced on-demand pricing for its IT management tool, allowing customers to pay by the hour for application management. Capabilities. 

PacketTrap Networks

Why it made the list: PacketTrap offers a "high-end product suite that starts with a free set of tools that is great for hands-on troubleshooting and administration," said Jim Frey, research director at Enterprise Management Associates, in 2008. The company also "leverages a large community of customers to participate in and drive the direction of the product," he says. And the company "has spent time developing some very valuable advanced policy and intelligent baselining features that commonly only come with much-higher-cost solutions." Its Perspective product was designed to address an under-served midmarket customer base that company founders identified.

Highlights from the last year: PacketTrap was acquired by Quest Software in a deal that closed this month. The financial details of the deal were not disclosed, but a company spokeswoman explained the economic downturn slowed product development for the start-up. The acquisition route will enable PacketTrap to fill the network management hole in Quest’s portfolio, while also better serving existing customers.

“The resources – headcount and budget – that Quest gives PacketTrap will allow us to build out the product much faster than we could do by ourselves,” says Anna Yen vice president of marketing at PacketTrap. “ Our customers can also take comfort that they’re no longer dealing with a start-up, that we’ll be around for a long time (Quest has a $1.5 billion market cap) as that was always an issue in a bake-off for us.”

Schultz is a longtime IT journalist. You can email her or find her here.