Qumranet, Inc. was an enterprise software company offering a desktop virtualization platform based on hosted desktops in Kernel-based Virtual Machines (KVM) on servers, linked with their SPICE protocol. The company was also the creator, maintainer and global sponsor of the KVM open source hypervisor.
| Industry | Software |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2005 |
| Founder | Benny Schnaider |
| Parent | Red Hat |
History
editThe company was founded in 2005 by CEO Benny Schnaider, with Rami Tamir as president, Moshe Bar as CTO, and chairman Dr. Giora Yaron.[1] Qumranet had raised $20 million in two financing rounds from its founders, Norwest Venture Partners, Cisco Systems, and Sequoia Capital, in addition to investment by the founding partners.[1]
The company's first product, named "Solid ICE", hosted Windows and Linux desktops on central servers located in a data center.[2]
The Ra'anana-based company developed a virtualization technology for IT data centers.[1][3]
From a very low-profile Israeli startup the company made waves with the rapid acceptance of KVM into the Linux kernel, and their Solid ICE desktop virtualization platform has received serious attention.[4][5][6][7]
Avi Kivity was the lead developer and maintainer of the Kernel-based Virtual Machine project from mid-2006, that has been part of the Linux kernel since the 2.6.20 release in February 2007.[8]
Qumranet was on the Gartner Group's 2008 list of "Cool Vendors," an award given to small companies with advanced technology.[9]
On September 4, 2008, Qumranet was acquired by Red Hat, Inc. for $107 million.[10][11][12][13][14][15]
Key executives
edit- Benny Schnaider, co-founder, chief executive officer and director
- Rami Tamir, Co-Founder, president and director
- Moshe Bar Ph.D., co-founder and chief technology officer
- Giora Yaron Ph.D, co-founder and chairman of the board[16]
- Shmil Levy, board member, Sequoia Capital
- Vab Goel, board member, Norwest Venture Partners
References
edit- ^ a b c Lan, Shlomit (28 May 2017). "Dr. Giora Yaron: Startups need carrots not sticks". Globes.
- ^ Savitz, Eric (4 September 2008). "Red Hat Buys Virtualization Company". Barron's.
- ^ Wrobel, Sharon (5 September 2008). "Red Hat Buys Qumranet". Jerusalem Post.
- ^ Businessweek.com Archived March 13, 2008, at the Wayback Machine, "Sequoia, Norwest, Storm Fund Israeli Startups"
- ^ Heise.de Archived March 11, 2008, at the Wayback Machine, "Virtualization solution KVM will be in the next version of Linux"
- ^ ITbusinessedge.com Archived 2009-01-07 at the Wayback Machine, "Barbarians at the VMware Gate"
- ^ "Skating on Solid ICE Desktop Virtualization"
- ^ Interview: Avi Kivity Archived 2007-04-26 at the Wayback Machine on KernelTrap
- ^ Zadok, Shahar (26 May 2008). "Six Israeli start-ups among Gartner "Cool Vendors": The Cool Vendors 2008 report covers 172 companies". McClatchy.
- ^ "Red Hat Advances Virtualization Leadership with Qumranet, Inc. Acquisition" (Red Hat press release)
- ^ "Red Hat buys Qumranet for $107M. What does this mean for KVM and SolidICE?". BrianMadden.com. Retrieved 2018-06-26.
- ^ Denne, Scott (5 February 2013). "Qumranet Founders Emerge With $26M for Latest Cloud Venture, Ravello". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 5 February 2020.
- ^ Vance, Ashlee (4 September 2008). "Red Hat Buys a Seat at the Virtualization Table". New York Times. Retrieved 5 February 2020.
- ^ Grimland, Guy (5 September 2008). "Qumranet Makes Exit With $115m Sale". Haaretz. Retrieved 5 February 2020.
- ^ Cohen, Sagi (29 May 2019). "Israeli Serial Entrepreneurs Found Fourth Startup". Haaretz. Retrieved 8 February 2020.
- ^ Businessweek.com "Qumranet, Inc."