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Virtual Iron secures $20 million

Virtual Iron has plenty of competition, but the sever virtualization company says it's valuation increased in a new round of funding.

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Stephen Shankland principal writer
Stephen Shankland has been a reporter at CNET since 1998 and writes about processors, digital photography, AI, quantum computing, computer science, materials science, supercomputers, drones, browsers, 3D printing, USB, and new computing technology in general. He has a soft spot in his heart for standards groups and I/O interfaces. His first big scoop was about radioactive cat poop.
Expertise processors, semiconductors, web browsers, quantum computing, supercomputers, AI, 3D printing, drones, computer science, physics, programming, materials science, USB, UWB, Android, digital photography, science Credentials
  • I've been covering the technology industry for 24 years and was a science writer for five years before that. I've got deep expertise in microprocessors, digital photography, computer hardware and software, internet standards, web technology, and other dee
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Stephen Shankland

Virtual Iron, a start-up aiming to commercialize the open-source Xen virtualization software, has raised $20 million.

The investment include Highland Capital Partners, Matrix Partners, Goldman Sachs, Intel Capital, and SAP Ventures, the Lowell, Mass.-based company said. Total funding for the company now has reached $65 million, the company said Monday.

Virtual Iron had "dramatic growth" over the last 12 months, and the new funding round was at a higher valuation, the company said. It didn't release particulars, but did cite IDC statistics saying that spending on server virtualization is growing at 60 percent per year and that Virtual Iron is growing faster than the overall market.

Virtual Iron also grown internationally, with 40 percent of revenue from outside North America, and has distributor deals with Avnet and Tech Data.

Virtual Iron competes chiefly with virtualization powerhouse VMware. However, it looks like the company has its sights set more on the host of second-tier alternatives, including Citrix Systems' XenSource, Microsoft's forthcoming Hyper-V, and Parallels' forthcoming Parallels Server.

"Virtual Iron is the only competitor to VMware in the market that has the features to support the high-value use cases for virtualization such as dynamic workload management, fault tolerance, and disaster recovery," said David Skok, a general partner at Matrix Partners.