From AI and software robots to new security techniques such as isolation, which hot tech start-ups could break through this year? We asked execs at 10 resellers, from cyber-security and cloud specialists to big players such as Daisy and Softcat, for their tips
Velostrata
Founded: 2014
Total funds raised: $31.5m (Crunchbase)
HQ: San Jose, California
Field: Enterprise cloud migration
Cheerleader: Dan Scarfe, New Signature UK
This 'cloud workload mobility' specialist was founded by the duo behind StorSimple (which Microsoft acquired in 2012), and its technology was billed as 'StorSimple in reverse' by Dan Scarfe, founder of Microsoft Azure partner New Signature UK.
Scarfe (pictured) tipped Velostrata to shake up the datacentre modernisation space in 2018, adding that New Signature recently won a major deal with an oil and gas company after signing up as its first major UK partner.
"Azure has so much capability out of the box that it's fairly rare we need to work with third-party software," he said. "This is something that has risen onto my radar because it is so strategically important to us - it's my hot tip for Microsoft's next acquisition."
Scarfe said Velostrata's solution is a perfect fit for larger enterprises embarking on datacentre modernisation projects.
"Storsimple is all about keeping data on-premise and tiering it out to the cloud. Velostrata takes the opposite approach: it allows you to access on-premise storage from the cloud," he explained.
"Velostrata connects to your existing on-premise VMware environment, and then allows you to effectively boot machines in the cloud while those machines are either still completely on-premise, or are in the process of being migrated to the cloud. It's a really nice way of rapidly migrating on-premise VMs to the cloud."
Click onto the next page to read Ultima CEO Scott Dodds' top tech tip for 2018
