VKernel announced that Gartner has named the company as a “Cool Vendor in Server Virtualization Management, 2008.” The report issued on March 17, 2007 lists VKernel as one of the “leading contenders attempting to address optimization of the virtual-server infrastructure.”

According to the Gartner report, the rapid deployment of virtual-server technology is resulting in increased demand for tools to provide more-effective planning and oversight. As organizations scale their virtual infrastructures with velocity, new solutions are needed to solve new management challenges. VKernel is changing today’s cumbersome systems management approach with tools that are optimized to save overburdened IT departments time with virtual appliances that quickly deploy, require no learning curve, and instantly solve critical issues in virtual data centers.

“It is great market validation and an honor to be named as a Gartner Cool Vendor,” said Alex Bakman, founder and CEO of VKernel. “With our expanding suite of virtual appliances, we are changing the traditional approach to systems management by addressing the new challenges that are arising with the rapid adoption of server virtualization. In particular, Gartner has recognized our cost visibility and chargeback solution in this report and endorsed the measured resource usage (MRU) model for shared server cost recovery, which VKernel uses, in a previous research report.”

The VKernel Virtual Appliance Suite for Systems Management is a set of “plug-and-play” virtual appliances designed to quickly address real world systems management challenges as organizations migrate to VMware ESX virtual environments. VKernel products enable IT groups to immediately solve today’s critical pain points by providing visibility into the capacity and resource consumption of each virtual machine. VKernel is currently offering a Chargeback Virtual Appliance for gaining cost visibility and implementing chargeback, and a Capacity Bottleneck Analyzer Virtual Appliance for identifying and eliminating capacity bottlenecks.

The Gartner “Cool Vendor in Server Virtualization Management, 2008” report was authored by Cameron Haight, Ronni Colville, and Milind Govekar. Gartner's definition of a "Cool Vendor" is a small company that offers technologies or products that are:

• Innovative — they enable users to do things they couldn't do before.
• Impactful — they have or will have business impact. It's not just "technology for the sake of technology."
• Intriguing — they have caught Gartner’s interest or curiosity in the past six months or so.

Recently, VKernel also received industry recognition from Network World when the company was named as one of seven virtual management companies to watch in 2008.