Ten resellers reveal which tech start-ups they are tipping to take off in 2018

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

Ten resellers reveal which tech start-ups they are tipping to take off in 2018

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

Thoughtonomy

Founded: 2013

HQ: London

Field: Robotic process automation

Cheerleader: Scott Dodds, Ultima Business Solutions

Thoughtonomy may be one of the youngest and smallest firms on this list, but the cognitive robotic process automation (RPA) market in which it plays was this month touted as a potential $3.6bn (£2.6bn) market by 2026 by analyst BIS Research.

Among its proponents is Scott Dodds, CEO of £100m-revenue reseller and MSP Ultima Business Solutions, which has just begun touting Thoughtonomy to clients after completing a two-year internal rollout of its technology.

"That's the technology that's having the biggest impact on our business right now," Dodds (pictured) said.

"This is not a product we are selling, but something we are doing."

Dodds said RPA can be used to free up employees from carrying out mundane tasks, allowing them to focus on more complex and worthwhile activities.

"RPA has been around for a while as a concept, but typically in the past it's been big on-premise systems that require a lot of heavy lifting," he explained.

"Because this is all SaaS delivered - in this case it sits on the Microsoft Azure cloud - it's much faster to deploy, test and run, so the RoI is much quicker once you've identified the right processes and activities to go after. We started this journey a year or two ago, and as we went through it we realised this is something we should be doing with our customers once we've learned how to do it ourselves."

Click onto the next page to read Trilogy Technologies' MD Edel Creely's top tech tip for 2018

Ten resellers reveal which tech start-ups they are tipping to take off in 2018

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

ScienceLogic

Founded: 2003

Total funds raised: $84m (Crunchbase)

HQ: Reston, Virginia

Field: Hybrid IT service assurance and monitoring

Cheerleader: Edel Creely, Trilogy Technologies

ScienceLogic may have been founded back in 2003, but the IT monitoring outfit is currently hot property among VCs and the channel alike, with Anglo-Irish managed services provider Trilogy Technologies among its fans.

Virginia-based ScienceLogic, which specialises in ‘hybrid IT service assurance and monitoring' scooped $43m in Series D funding in 2015, doubling its funding total.

Edel Creely, group managing director at Trilogy (pictured), said her firm is in the process of adding ScienceLogic to its managed services proposition, saying it could help boost application uptime for her customers.

"We have other management technologies which we use at the pure infrastructure layer, which is part of the basic managed service," she said. "But we see this as more of a sophisticated, enterprise-level monitoring service. We've done our research, and what we liked about it is that it works across IT platforms - so it works in AWS and Azure as well as on-premise."

She added: "Applications are becoming more mission-critical. People need them running 24/7 and applications have interdependencies on the infrastructure they are sitting on; there could be devices - IoT and other things - they are connecting into. With this management platform we can monitor all those devices and map them out, so if something goes wrong we can quickly identify where the problem is and get it back up and running quickly, or even head it off."

Click onto the next page to read Sapphire director David Lannin's top tech tip for 2018

Ten resellers reveal which tech start-ups they are tipping to take off in 2018

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

Menlo Security

Founded: 2013

Total funds raised: $85.5m (Crunchbase)

HQ: Menlo Park, California

Field: Web and email isolation

Cheerleader: David Lannin, Sapphire

This ‘isolation' specialist scored $40m in Series C funding in December and has the financial clout, management pedigree and technology to take the UK channel by storm in 2018, according to one of its newly recruited partners, Sapphire.

Menlo's ‘isolation' platform works by opening websites and emails in secure cloud-based containers and rendering a copy of the content on the end-point device - therefore keeping potentially harmful content away from the device itself.

Tipping Menlo for take-off is David Lannin (pictured), director of technology at Sapphire, who said the Californian vendor is one of the few start-ups he has seen in recent months whose offering is more than just a feature.

"While there are other vendors starting to move into [isolation] - Symantec has an offering now and no doubt Intel and other people will shortly - the difference with Menlo is they address not only web but also email," Lannin said.

"[If you take web] they are interpreting what the website is doing and presenting you with a copy of that, but that is stripped out of any active content and anything that might push down malware to the end-point client."

Menlo launched its first UK partner programme last year in a bid to steal market share from FireEye and now employs 25 staff in the UK, several of whom previously worked for its rival (including EMEA VP Paul Davis and EMEA CTO Jason Steer).

"Menlo have really taken the bull by the horns and put a UK team in place that understands how to take technology to market," said Lannin.

Click onto the next page to read Epaton MD Jonathan Lassman's top tech tip for 2018

Ten resellers reveal which tech start-ups they are tipping to take off in 2018

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

Garrison

Founded: 2014

Funds raised to date: £16m

HQ: London

Field: Secure remote browsing

Cheerleader: Jonathan Lassman, Epaton

Having raised £16m in funding in its short life, Garrison is "changing the face of web filtering", according to Jonathan Lassman, managing director of storage VAR Epaton.

Founded in 2014 by two former BAE bigwigs, London-based Garrison specialises in secure remote browsing, where the user's browser runs on a completely separate and isolated computer. If the browser is compromised, the attacker has no access to the user's device or other sensitive data or systems, Garrison claims.

Lassman (pictured) is preparing to move back into the cybersecurity space in March and described Garrison as "one of the most amazing things I've seen in years".

"Imagine an appliance where you've got a row of ARM processors at the front and a row of ARM processors behind," he said. "You put in a URL request and then the first row goes out to the web and it plays video to the second row. You are now not on the internet: you are watching the internet in real time."

Garrison has scored funding from the British Growth Fund and Touchstone Innovations, and claims to already have clients in the banking, insurance, media, law and government sectors.

"It's going through CESG approval because now the government can go on the dark web, because they're not actually on the dark web. Everything is pretty low key for them at the moment, but I'm excited by it," Lassman said.

"We're not in the security space yet, but we are still keeping our toe in the water and want to be ready to take on the latest technologies in March."

Click onto the next page to read Metaphor IT CTO Mario Cirillo's top tech tip for 2018

Ten resellers reveal which tech start-ups they are tipping to take off in 2018

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

Mindtrace

Founded: 2017

Total funds raised: £1.3m

HQ: London

Field: Self-learning machines

Cheerleader: Mario Cirillo, Metaphor IT

Though barely a year old, and yet to release its first product, this Manchester-based AI start-up has caught the eye of Mario Cirillo, CTO of Metaphor IT.

Founded in January 2017, MindTrace claims to be one of the few companies developing intelligent machines that can teach themselves independently. It is helmed by a string of leading academics, including Professor Steve Furber, who designed the BBC Microcomputer and the processors for the chip giant ARM Holdings.

The firm appeared on Cirillo's radar when it scooped £1.3m in funding in November, but he admitted it was too early to say whether Metaphor IT will take it on.

"Their focus is on unsupervised learning: creating algorithms that can think like the human brain," Cirillo (pictured) said.

"That technology is really applicable for things like autonomous cars. But it will be interesting to see in the IT world how it could be used for things like self-healing - you have a system that goes down and over time it can actually learn unsupervised how to remediate itself. That would be quite an interesting spin on that technology if you pair it with things like monitoring."

He added: "They're raising funding to put a team together in order to bring a prototype to market, and it will be very interesting to see what proposition they bring to market."

Click onto the next page to read Softcat's Sam Routledge's top tech tip for 2018

Ten resellers reveal which tech start-ups they are tipping to take off in 2018

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

Ten resellers reveal which tech start-ups they are tipping to take off in 2018

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

Hytrust

Founded: 2007

HQ: Mountain View, California

Total funds raised: $108.5m (Crunchbase)

Field: Security compliance and control software

Cheerleader: Andy Trevor, Cutter Group

Backed by Intel and VMware, this Californian security compliance and control software outfit is looking to make a splash in the UK channel this year after grabbing $36m in VC funding last July.

Andy Trevor, managing director of Cutter Group, is among HyTrust's fans, saying its technology will fulfil an unmet need among its financial clients, particularly as they gear up for GDPR.

"My first engagement with them was on Friday, so we are very early on in that journey, but there is definitely something of interest. They are talking to a high-powered customer base," he said.

"We are starting to see more organisations looking at micro-segmentation inside VMware with NSX, and this is a complementary layer that sits on top. The security requirements of the financial industry are getting stricter, and HyTrust's suite of applications address issues throughout the stack, both internally and externally, providing granularity around data management, data segmentation, data compliance, encryption etc. It ticks a lot of those boxes."

Hytrust already has a UK presence, but has indicated it will bolster its local sales resources following last July's funding round, Trevor said.

"Obviously there is some interest there to raise that money in the current climate, and there's backing there from VMware and Intel," said Trevor, who said Cutter could act as a technical extension for Hytrust if the relationship blossoms.

Click onto the next page to read Blue Cube's Rob Swainson's top tech tip for 2018

Ten resellers reveal which tech start-ups they are tipping to take off in 2018

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

Certes Networks

Founded 2000

Total funds raised: $23.8m (Crunchbase)

HQ: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Field: Layer 4 encryption

Cheerleader: Rob Swainson, Blue Cube

Founded in 2000 and boasting 800 customers, Certes is hardly a newbie, but the Pennsylvania-based encryption specialist has caught the eye of cybersecurity integrator Blue Cube following a UK launch last year.

Blue Cube sales director Rob Swainson singled out Certes as his tip for take-off in 2018, arguing that it could solve some of the past woes associated with encryption.

"People have tried to do network-layer encryption and it hasn't necessarily been effective, as it's a bit clunky when having to make changes on routers and switches and security infrastructure," he said. "Whereas with the Certes story, it enables you to encrypt the payload at layer 4 and eliminates that need to make complex changes to the network infrastructure. It's an interesting technology that we are having a bit of focus on."

Certes' largest round of funding to date - $14.26m - came back in 2010 and is smaller than others in this list, but Swainson said financial clout isn't the only consideration when taking on emerging vendors.

"There are vendors out there that appear to have started purely with the exit strategy of being acquired by one of the large vendors, which isn't ideal for an organisation like us if we are investing in a relationship," he said.

"They are building a UK team. As a business they've been around for a number of years, but the technology they've brought to market, and some of the future plans for the technology, are quite exciting."

Ten resellers reveal which tech start-ups they are tipping to take off in 2018

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

Spotinst

Founded: 2015

Total funds raised: $17.6m (Cruchbase)

HQ: San Francisco

Field: Cloud cost management

Cheerleader: Nathan Marke, Daisy Group

Founded in 2015 by a group of former Israeli defence programmers, Spotinst claims it can cut organisations' cloud computing costs by 80 per cent.

The San Francisco-based start-up gained backing from Intel Capital in a $15m funding round last July, and is also earning admirers in the UK channel, including Daisy Group chief digital officer Nathan Marke.

Marke (pictured) said that Spotinst can help businesses retain control over costs as they move to public cloud.

"Public cloud adoption will accelerate in 2018," he said. "One of the biggest benefits in moving to hyperscale is the consumption model, however without due care this benefit can quickly become a challenge, as businesses lose control of cost. For this reason, hybrid cloud cost optimisation will appear on the radar in 2018."

Marke added: "For me, Spotinst are in a sweet spot - enabling businesses to leverage spare capacity or spot instances in public cloud platforms where workloads can be run at a lower cost than in the premium marketplace. I can see this type of value-add becoming increasingly relevant to the channel as part of a cost-optimisation proposition."