New Cloud Companies Bring Fresh Ideas to Under the Radar

UPDATED: Cloud adoption, migration and various associated services are the overriding themes of the day at the Under the Radar conference, a chance for CEOs to impress a group of potential investors and reassure their original financial backers that they, indeed, have the right stuff to succeed in the current IT market.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.-Nervous CEOs were sighted pacing the hall April 16 as they awaited their opportunity to introduce fledgling companies at Under the Radar, an annual new-company showcase for analysts and venture capitalists held here at Microsoft's Silicon Valley campus.

This was a huge chance for them to impress a group of potential investors and reassure their original financial backers that they, indeed, have the right stuff to succeed in the current IT market.

The format was sort of like speed-dating: The startups were grouped in sets of three or four for each of seven sessions. Each CEO or president had only 6 minutes to deliver a clear, compelling message about what problem his company's product or service solves and why that company will have enduring value.

Cloud adoption, migration and various associated services were the overriding themes of the day. Lots of notes were taken and questions asked, and some impressive ideas were brought to video screens and discussions.

These are companies-carefully selected by organizer Debbie Landa-that are likely to be serious IT influencers in the months and years to come.

Here are UTR's short descriptions of all of the 27 companies selected, in alphabetical order, including their headquarters locations. eWEEK will examine many of these in closer detail in the weeks to come.

App Dynamics, San Francisco
This is a next-generation Application Performance Management company that delivers rapid problem resolution for highly distributed applications through easy-to-use transaction flow monitoring and deep diagnostics. AppDynamics finds the root cause of performance problems without introducing excess overhead or requiring a complex and costly installation.

AppFirst, New York
AppFirst delivers the first SAAS [software as a service]-based application performance monitoring product enabling SAAS IT operations to visualize, at a glance, the real-time physical reality of applications on infrastructure. It is language-agnostic, supporting Windows and Linux servers.

Aprigo, Waltham, Mass.
Aprigo makes data management applications that are delivered via SAAS. Aprigo provides visibility and control into file access, file resources file and recovery for all unstructured data or files, on-premises and in the cloud. With no infrastructure to install and no files opened, Aprigo provides actionable results in minutes.

AwayFind, College Park, Md.
AwayFind makes a Web application that helps you find your important messages so you can get away from your inbox. When there's an urgent e-mail, AwayFind will call, SMS [Short Message Service], IM, DM (Twitter), or delegate the message to someone you specify. It supports all major e-mail platforms including Google Apps/Gmail, Microsoft Exchange, Yahoo Mail and IMAP.

Cloudant, Cambridge, Mass.
Cloudant is an integrated data management, search and analytics engine that offers new ways for businesses to manage and analyze data. Cloudant's platform is built specifically for the distributed environment enabled by cloud computing [and] is grounded in the NoSQL philosophy of databases.

CloudShare, Menlo Park, Calif.
This SAAS platform is new way to share copies of complex IT environments online, so that developers can "collaborate with customers, partners and colleagues for demos, proofs-of-concept, training or other enterprise applications. The key takeaway: no wasting time copying gigabytes of software or shipping machines and people. VMware, Cisco Systems and SAP are already using CloudShare.

CloudSwitch, Burlington, Mass.
CloudSwitch makes a software appliance [that] enables enterprises to move their existing applications to the right cloud computing environment-securely, simply and without changes. With CloudSwitch, applications remain tightly integrated with enterprise data center tools and policies, and can be moved easily between different cloud environments and back into the data center based on the requirements of the business.

Conformity, Austin, Texas
This company provides a new-generation "enterprise-class management and governance platform for cloud applications. Conformity enables organizations to centrally manage on-demand applications, users and data, reducing security and compliance risks and operational costs associated with SAAS and cloud applications."

Crowdcast, San Francisco
Crowdcast is a SAAS crowd-forecasting service that the company says enables customers to understand the true state of their business by tapping the wisdom of their employees and partners. For the participants, it's like a game, where they are rewarded for accurately forecasting key events and metrics. For the enterprise, [Crowdcast presents] a rich source of unbiased insight about what is most likely to happen. Confused? Check out the Web site.

CubeTree, Redwood City, Calif.
In the last year, the market has seen a dramatic shift toward using social software platforms to transform how a company's employees, partners and customers connect and collaborate. Platforms like CubeTree are helping companies create connections between employees in unprecedented ways, enable real-time conversations within these employee networks, and enrich conversations with relevant content from end users and business systems.