10 hot emerging vendors for June

Company: Gigenet

Tech Sector: Services

Key Product: Gigenetcloud

The Lowdown: Gigenet, Arlington Heights, Ill., in 1997 started as a virtual web hosting and application development provider, but re-launched in 2004 as a provider of managed dedicated servers, cloud servers, virtual servers, co-location, and managed storage backups. The company offers a 100 percent uptime SLA for its managed dedicated servers, and its cloud hosting services start at US$10 per month or 1.3 cents per hour.

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Company: Bountiful Wi-Fi

Tech Sector: Networking

Key Product: BWRACWALL Series Controller

The Lowdown: Founded in 2004 in Bountiful, Utah, Bountiful Wi-Fi touts its products as some of "the most powerful Wi-Fi products and solutions allowed by law." Its BWRACWALL Series Controller (pictured) is one of the principal products available through VARSense, the company's channel-oriented discounting program, through which Bountiful targets VARs, systems integrators and IT managers -- enterprise or SMB -- with a particular emphasis on hospitality, health-care and education sales.

Company: Sentrigo

Tech Sector: Database Security

Key Product: Hedgehog Enterprise

The Lowdown: Sentrigo, founded in 2006, offers a full suite of products for vulnerability assessment, virtual patching and database monitoring/auditing. The company's flagship product, Hedgehog Enterprise (pictured), provides database activity monitoring (DAM) and real-time intrusion prevention, protecting sensitive data from both external threats and misuse by privileged insiders.

Company: Think Outside Of Box

Tech Sector: Hardware

Key Product: TOOB

The Lowdown: Founded by Alexander McDonnell in July 2009, La Verne Calif.-based Think Outside Of Box makes an immersive omni dome projection theater called the TOOB -- an IMAX theater for the home, according to the startup's head of sales, James Pizzola. Think Outside Of Box is also working with 3D content developers to add to the visual feast of viewing media in a TOOB.

Tech Sector: Software

Key Product: VersaReports Universal Report Server

The Lowdown: Report servers, such as SAP’s Crystal Reports and Microsoft’s SQL Server Reporting Services, are essentially portals for back-end reporting engines that businesses use to schedule and manage the dissemination of reports to managers and employees.

Company: Lucid Imagination

Tech Sector: Software

Key Product: LucidWorks Certified Distribution for Solr

The Lowdown: The search and discovery market is growing at a brisk pace of 28 percent annually, with 2007 revenue of US$1.8 billion, according to IDC. Lucid Imagination offers certified distributions of Lucene and Solr, commercial-grade support, training, high-level consulting and value-added software extensions. The company’s web site serves as a knowledge portal for the Lucene community, with information and resources to help developers build and deploy Lucene-based solutions in a more efficient and cost-effective manner.

Company: AutoVirt,p> Tech Sector: Storage

Key Product: AutoVirt file virtualisation solution

The Lowdown: AutoVirt is riding the wave of two hot technology trends: virtualisation and file system centralisation. The Nashua, N.H.-based company's flagship AutoVirt software platform is designed for storage area networks and the cloud.

Company: Armorize Technologies

Tech Sector: Security

Key Product: Armorize AppSec Suite

The Lowdown: Santa Clara, Calif.-based Armorize Technologies, founded in 2005, prides itself on protecting enterprise companies from hackers attempting to exploit vulnerable web applications, and preventing data theft, compliance failure and financial loss due to zero-day exploits. Its flagship product, the Armorize AppSec Suite, comprises three separate components: CodeSecure, a static source code analysis platform; HackAlert, a cloud-based zero-day malware drive-by download alerting system; and SmartWAF, a host-based Web application firewall.

Company: Cumulux

Tech Sector: Software

Key Product: Manage Axis cloud monitoring and management

The Lowdown: Founded in 2008 in Chicago, Cumulux takes to the cloud to deliver products and services for enterprises to strategise, develop and operationalise cloud computing applications. Implementing SaaS solutions based on Microsoft Windows Azure, Amazon EC2 and Salesforce.com's Force.com, Cumulux has five channel partners currently, but is looking to bring on more to offer its line of Axis cloud management and monitoring tools, such as Manage Axis, which can monitor and manage Windows Azure-based applications.

Company: KnowledgeTree

Tech Sector: Software

Key Product: KnowledgeTree SaaS/License Editions

The Lowdown: KnowledgeTree has a unique back story: the company was founded in 2006 in Cape Town, South Africa, with the intention of building a business around open-source document management software. And by the spring of 2007, KnowledgeTree’s eponymous flagship software product reached 300,000 downloads via the open-source portal SourceForge.net. Fast forward to 2010 and the company now has both an on-site license version of its enterprise content management software as well as a software-as-a-service version called KnowledgeTree Live. h