The Under The Radar (UTR) Conference (http://www.undertheradarblog.com/) is tomorrow, April 26, 2012. UTR is the intersection of hot up-and-coming startups, investors and judging. If the reception tonight was any indication, the conference and presentations should be very interesting. Here’s a sneak peak of my take of the hot areas and companies to watch:
Application Development Solutions
A few companies are presenting their solutions in the mobile and security space. In the era of cloud computing, these are two hot buttons that enterprises and service providers alike need to be keenly aware of. The move of the information worker from a stationary device to a mobile device is in process. CoIT and BYOD are both serious factors to the movement. Likewise, using traditional security paradigms in the new model run into serious complications. Tools are needed to help organizations make this move while managing and securing environments.
Companies: BitzerMobile, Cabana, Duo Security, Fabric Engine, Framehawk, StackMob
Platforms and Infrastructure
Building applications on top of infrastructure is nothing new. In the cloud era, the architecture…and options open up quite a bit. The cloud market is starting to mature and value is moving from core infrastructure to platforms and on to applications. Leveraging hosted platforms does require a different paradigm to succeed. In addition, when considering apps at scale, automation and orchestration become even more important. This is a very broad area with quite a bit of specialization. Moving forward, integration in the space will be the key to success…along with some consolidation.
Companies: Appfog, AppHarbor, CloudBees, CloudScaling, Drawn to Scale, ionGrid, Iron.io, MemSQL, MongoLab, Nodejitsu, NuoDB, Piston Cloud, Puppet Labs, Sauce Labs, ScaleArc, Zadara Storage
Monitoring and Analytics
One of the most interesting areas is how data is used and analyzed. And then taking action based on the information gleaned from the data. Players in this space range from aggregating data to understanding and analyzing it. Value increases as the data is moved into analytics and ultimately business actions taken based on the intelligence. While there is quite a bit of specialization in this area at different levels (application monitoring/ performance management to analytics and intelligence), added value will come when these can be tied together to drive business decisions.
Companies: Chart.io, Cloudability, Cloudyn, Datadog, DataSift, Infochimps, Metamarkets, Nodeable, Sumo Logic, Tracelytics
Interesting Areas to Watch
In today’s marketplace, there are the future-state solutions and concepts. And then there are the real-world solutions that solve today’s problems. Both states need to be understood and the ball needs to be moved forward…and fast! The increased amplitude of mobile devices along with cloud computing bring applications at scale into the forefront. Orchestration and automation becoming hallmarks to success to up-level the conversation and value IT brings to organizations. Ultimately, the play will be with data and analytics. But today, there are more fundamental issues on the table.
Of course, that’s just a cursory review of the upcoming presentations from the UTR conference. Look for more details in the UTR Twitter stream (#UTRconf) and posts after the conference.