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
Druva
Founded: 2008
Total funds raised: $198m (Crunchbase)
HQ: Sunnyvale, California
Field: Cloud data protection and management
Cheerleader: Sam Routledge, Softcat
This cloud data protection and management vendor has been around for almost a decade, but the buzz around its technology - both among VCs and the channel - has suddenly ignited.
Founded in 2008, Druva began attracting serious VC cash in 2013, and in 2016 and 2017 hauled in a whopping $131m in funding, propelling its total to nearly $200m.
The surge in interest is entirely justified, according to Sam Routledge, solutions director at Softcat (pictured), which is betting on the Californian outfit to break through in 2018.
"People have a tendency to assume that if something is in the cloud, it is backed up and archived, and they don't need to worry about it, but that's clearly not the case," said Routledge. "Druva solve various problems, but one is that they back up cloud data to other places, typically to a storage platform on AWS and Azure."
Routledge admitted there is some overlap between Druva and Softcat ally Mimecast, but added: "Mimecast do more journaling and archiving, and security hygiene on the way in, whereas Druva is more point in time - they are almost complementary. There are other services that do backup for Office 365 but I'm not aware of anything that is doing it for all three major platforms [Office 365, Google Docs and Salesforce]."
Druva already has 4,000 customers and manages 40PB of data, but Routledge argued that it is only getting started in the UK and Europe.
"Druva certainly appear to be investing in the UK channel, and have got some good guys that we know from before," he said. "It's early days for them in terms of aggressively prospecting the UK and Europe, but they seem to have a lot of energy, and a reasonable degree of people. They've got every shot at it, and if they're going to do it, 2018 is going to be their year."
Click onto the next page to read Cutter Group's Andy Trevor's top tech tip for 2018
