Along with hearing from the most powerful companies in the enterprise IT market at VORTEX 2004, we also tried to weave in the voices of those who want to change the world. We picked out a cadre of companies that are potential disrupters – organizations that are trying to take advantage of the changes in the IT landscape to build the next great businesses.
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.Leo Tolstoy
Dear Vorticians,
Along with hearing from the most powerful companies in the enterprise IT market at VORTEX 2004, we also tried to weave in the voices of those who want to change the world. We picked out a cadre of companies that are potential disrupters – organizations that are trying to take advantage of the changes in the IT landscape to build the next great businesses.
I thought, as something of an early Thanksgiving treat, that I’d give you a look at these players, with the hope that you might profit by getting to know them.
* Acopia Networks
Acopia was founded in 2002 by serial entrepreneur Cheng Wu, who launched Arris Networks and Arrowpoint Communications, which were acquired for scads of cash by Cascade and Cisco, respectively. Acopia’s CEO Chris Lynch told the VORTEX audience about the company’s Adaptive Resource Switch, which enables IT shops to virtualize a heterogeneous storage environment – something many have promised and not delivered upon. The system creates one big pool of networked storage that makes it easier for users to access and manage information, particularly all the unstructured data across the organization. The company has raised $65 million in venture funding, and the product has been deployed by Merrill Lynch and Warner Music among other big customers.
Scope out Acopia at http://www.acopianetworks.com .
* Adesso Systems
Adesso was founded by another serial entrepreneur, John Landry, whom I met in the mid-1980s when he was architecting cutting-edge software at McCormick & Dodge. He was also the architect of the Lotus Notes platform and his experience with that collaborative system has shaped his efforts at Adesso, which is focused on helping companies build applications for a mobile workforce, whether they be roaming executives like me or field workers who actually do something productive for a living. The Adesso platform allows for rapid development of mobile applications and is currently being used by companies like Abbott Labs, Xerox and JetBlue Airways.
If mobility is a critical issue for your company – and it is for most – check out the software at http://www.adessosystems.com .
* MySQL
No need to explain to this crowd about the growing influence of the open source software movement. Most of the discussion around open source, however, centers on Linux and maybe Apache. But MySQL is building a thriving business on open source database technology. CEO Marten Mickos explained that the company has more than 5 million active installations of the MySQL database software with a customer list too big and impressive to mention. MySQL is part of an increasingly popular computing architecture dubbed the LAMP stack (for Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP/Perl/Python) that competes with commercial offerings at each level. There’s an astonishing array of applications – including increasingly high-end apps – for this low-cost database technology.
You can learn more about it at http://www.mysql.com .
* Virtusa
Virtusa combines the power of a new and unique approach to building enterprise applications with the overwhelming economic advantages of offshore development. Co-founder and CEO Kris Canekeratne, who also established three other technology companies, described for Vorticians Virtusa’s Productization methodology, which involves building a platform of business processes that are shared by multiple applications. In essence, you pull all the functionality common to core apps into one platform on which everything is then built. Productization streamlines maintenance and boosts resource usage, and allows for much more rapid deployment of new apps. The Virtusa teams works with clients to architect the base platform for their current apps and then uses a corps of developers abroad to build the system. Virtusa, which I think has a great shot at going public, has clients like Aetna, BankOne, Qwest, Circuit City and many
other big shots.
See more about Virtusa at http://www.virtusa.com .
In addition to these innovators, we spoke with an executive of VeriSign, which has a growing role in the managed services market. We’ll talk more about that company’s growing influence in a future missive.
For now, I wish you Happy Thanksgiving. You won’t hear from me next week, which some of you may count among your blessings, but I always want to hear from you at mailto:jgallant@vortex.net.
Bye.
