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NEWS RELEASES
Virtualization Start-up Virtual Iron™ Software, Inc. Launches Company, Prepares for Introduction of Breakthrough Product Virtual Iron Software will bring flexibility and cost savings to datacenters with innovative technology, experienced management team, strong financial backing ACTON, Mass. January 24, 2005 – Virtual Iron Software, Inc. - www.virtualiron.com - (formerly Katana Technology, Inc.) today unveiled its new corporate name, market focus, management team and investors as it prepares to enter the fast-growing enterprise datacenter virtualization market. Founded in 2003 by computer industry innovators Scott Davis and Alex Vasilevsky, Virtual Iron Software will deliver an enterprise-class virtual computing platform enabling customers to implement a Real-Time Infrastructure (RTI) -- creating more flexible, rapid resource deployment and significantly lowering total cost of ownership and ensuring that enterprises are not locked into proprietary architectures and solutions. Based on open standards, this innovative software platform dynamically creates "virtual servers" from any number of physical servers -- from a fraction of a processor to large-scale multi-processors. According to Carl Claunch, research vice president with Gartner, Inc., "RTI has three value propositions, expressed as business goals: reduced costs, achieved by better and more efficient resource usage and by reduced system-management (labor) costs; improved service levels, achieved by dynamic adjustments or tuning of IT services; and increased agility, achieved by rapid provisioning of new services or resources and scaling of established services." "Our announcement today is a prelude to the launch of an open standards-based solution -- a tipping point -- for the way corporate datacenters are architected and utilized," said John C. Thibault, president and chief executive officer of Virtual Iron Software. "We "We recognized that an inflection point of industry-standard operating systems, servers and interconnects was about to change the way enterprise datacenters were architected and utilized," said Davis, executive vice president, strategy and corporate development, CTO and founder. "However, a key technology component was missing to fully take advantage of industry trends. We founded Virtual Iron Software to capitalize on these evolving industry standards and to bring our vision of state-of-the-art datacenter virtualization to the marketplace." World-class investors Experienced management team and founders leading company With nearly 25 years of engineering, technology, and management experience, Davis is a recognized expert in clustering, operating systems, file systems and storage. Prior to founding Virtual Iron Software, he was CTO at Mangosoft, an Internet software and storage company with pioneering peer-to-peer clustering, caching and file system products. Before that, Davis was technical director for Digital's industry-acclaimed VAXCluster and VMS Volume Shadowing products, as well as Digital's Windows NT clustering technology. He holds 12 U.S. patents for clustering and storage virtualization technologies. Prior to co-founding Virtual Iron Software, Vasilevsky -- founder, executive vice president, technology and architecture, and chief scientist -- was CTO at Ucentric Systems, a leading provider of home media software. Vasilevsky brings more than 20 years of engineering, technology leadership and management experience to Virtual Iron Software. An expert in parallel processing, grid run-times systems, and advanced optimizing compilers, Vasilevsky held senior engineering and management roles in leading technology companies, such as Avid Technology and Thinking Machines. While at Thinking Machines, Vasilevsky created the world's first distributed grid run-time system for the highly acclaimed parallel supercomputer The Connection Machine. Vasilevsky holds five U.S. patents for his innovative work in parallel processing. Also joining the Virtual Iron Software management team is Bob Guilbert, vice president, marketing and business development. Guilbert has more than 20 years of international marketing and business development experience and was most recently at NSI Software. Prior to NSI, Guilbert held senior marketing positions at Digital Equipment and EMC Corp. Board of directors combines technical expertise and industry experience Jo Tango is a general partner at Highland Capital Partners, a venture capital firm that invests in seed, early and growth stage companies in the information technology, communications and healthcare markets. Tango's background focuses on datacenter, storage infrastructure and distributed computing investments. About Virtual Iron Software, Inc. Virtual Iron Software, Inc. provides the only enterprise-class virtual computing platform enabling customers to achieve the highest levels of datacenter utilization, flexibility and significantly lower capital costs. Founded in March 2003 by a highly regarded team of computer industry veterans, Virtual Iron Software is a privately held company based in Acton, Mass. More information is available at www.virtualiron.com . Contacts: Bill Baker |
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