Levanta Gets $8M for Data Center Automation

Levanta, a San Mateo, Calif. provider of Linux data center automation, has raised $8 million in new VC funding from Levensohn Venture Partners, vSpring and Walden International. The company, formerly known as Linuxcare, was founded in 1999 and filed and later withdrew plans for an IPO in 2000. It now focuses on automating the provisioning of Linux servers in the data center.

"Due to escalating management costs, enterprises are not able to truly reap the cost benefits of Linux on commodity hardware," said Ed Ekstrom, ex-founder of LANDesk and current managing director at vSpring Capital. "Levanta, with its deep domain expertise and focus on Linux, is uniquely positioned to address this problem."

"Levanta is solving a significant problem which is not fully solved by others," said Keith Benjamin, Managing Partner at Levensohn Venture Partners. "Competitors have good, cross-platform data center automation solutions, but lack the deep understanding of Linux and product functionality to properly monitor, change and control these environments. Unlike before, Linux is finally starting to more fully penetrate the enterprise market, leading to an increased need for Levanta's unique and superior Linux solution."

Levanta helps system administrators and IT managers effectively manage their Linux servers and applications, providing monitoring, automation and systems management tools in an integrated hardware/software package. Levanta says its technology can manage Linux servers and perform tasks such as Linux provisioning, patch management, automatic change tracking, rollback, disaster recovery and migration.