Big Data Analytics Startup CloudPhysics Raises $10 Million

Virtualized environments are becoming larger, denser and more complex than ever before. More integrations with other systems in the IT stack now exist, involving subtle interdependencies. Managing these environments has also become very complex. New cloud startup CloudPhysics aims to help.

Founded in 2011, CloudPhysics provides intelligent operations management for virtualized workloads. The company, whose backers include VMware co-founder Diane Greene, said today that it has raised $10 million in Funding led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and released its IT operations management service for VMware workloads.

CloudPhysics' cloud-based approach enables it to derive collective intelligence from the more than 80 billion samples of operations data it receives daily from its global user base.

"Big Data applied in a highly personalized manner has delivered huge, disruptive benefits in every industry - except IT," said Mike Abbott, general partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. "CloudPhysics is the first to apply it to IT, and they're well positioned to disrupt this market. We are impressed with their leadership team, game-changing SaaS offering and the community they have built since coming out of stealth mode late last year."

 Helps IT "Run VMware Like Google"

Today, the company released its SaaS offering, which automatically uncovers hidden operational hazards before these problems emerge, as well as identified efficiency improvements in storage, compute and networking with VMware workloads. It empowers IT to understand, troubleshoot, and optimize virtualized systems.  The company says it helps IT run VMware like Google.

"Google uses analysis of anonymized traffic data from everyone's GPS location streams to help users avoid accidents and bottlenecks and to make better driving decisions. CloudPhysics brings that same kind of power to IT so enterprises can make better operational decisions," said John Blumenthal, CloudPhysics CEO and Co-Founder. "Our servers receive a daily stream of 80+ billion samples of configuration, performance, failure and event data from our global user base with a total of 20+ trillion data points to date. This 'collective intelligence,' combined with CloudPhysics' patent-pending data center simulation and unique resource management techniques, empowers enterprise IT to drive Google-like operations excellence using actionable analytics from a large, relevant, continually refreshed dataset."

Card Store is Highly Focused Apps to Solve IT Problems

Card Store is the first IT operations app built on an industry-wide dataset and community. The CloudPhysics user interface is composed of “Card”, each of which is a focused app to solve a particular IT problem. Cards are built by CloudPhysics and members of its user community using the Card Builder feature of the cloud-based service and range across all IT operations use cases from planning, procurement, reporting, analysis, troubleshooting and capacity management.

It’s a central repository of targeted apps. Today’s IT teams often employ a myriad of homegrown, commercial, and open source products to manage IT operations of the virtualized data center. Card Store is an attempt to provide the same set of weapons, but with better interoperability. It cuts down the time management needed to manage all of these applications from a variety of places.

"With the Card Store, customers benefit from the collective intelligence of the IT community at their fingertips," said Irfan Ahmad, CTO and Co-Founder of CloudPhysics. "Purpose-built for IT operational tasks and problems, each user-defined analytic -- referred to as a 'Card' -- is a highly specialized app targeting a particular problem. To paraphrase Apple, 'If you have an operational problem in your data center, there's a Card for that.' And just as Apple's App Store revolutionized how consumers use technology, the CloudPhysics Card Store stands to revolutionize IT operations management."

Users also have access to the CloudPhysics Card Builder. IT teams can define, build and customize their own IT Operations Cards, and publish these solutions within teams or the Card Store and larger community. Many popular Cards -- such as Knowledge Base Advisor, vCheck suite, Security Hardening and Thin Provisioning Advisor -- were created by experts and renowned virtualization practitioners in the industry.

Managing virtualized IT means managing an ever-changing, dynamic set of conditions," said John Blumenthal, CEO and Co-Founder of CloudPhysics. "Today's static solutions can't keep pace and a new approach is called for -- leveraging collective intelligence drawn from industry-wide operations big data and delivering solutions rapidly via SaaS as users encounter new operational problems. This infusion of capital will accelerate our aggressive growth plans as we continue to hire the industry's best engineering talent and expand our global IT operational data service."

The $10 million series B also included previous investors the Mayfield Fund, Mark Leslie, Peter Wagner, Carl Waldspurger, Nigel Stokes, Matt Ocko and VMware co-founders Diane Greene and Mendel Rosenblum.

"The progress CloudPhysics has made over the last 18 months is phenomenal," said Robin Vasan, Managing Director at Mayfield Fund. "CloudPhysics' leadership team is exceptional, and they have done an excellent job growing the team and developing their intelligent operations management SaaS."