Meiosys Isn't Imagining $7.5 Million

French-born software startup Meiosys is planting its roots firmly on U.S. soil, and it has $7.5 million in Series D funding to help spread its virtualization message to American data centers.

The latest funding round, led by French investment firm Credit Lyonnais Private Equity, brings Meiosys' total funding to $16 million. Meiosys execs say this will support the company's operations into 2006.

They also expect easier going now that Meiosys is a U.S. company, with official headquarters in Delaware. The firm's management, marketing, and sales operations remain in Palo Alto, Calif., with engineering and R&D in Toulouse, France.

Hubert Catanese, Meiosys' vice president of sales & marketing, says it is much easier to do business now that the company is established in the U.S. "It's preferable for us to be a U.S. company the transactions are faster and simpler," he said.

So, what does Meiosys actually do? The company's core offering is its MetaCluster virtualization software, which relocates applications to higher-performance servers during times of peak workload. MetaCluster is currently available in two main versions: utility and high-performance computing. A third version, designed specifically for fault tolerance, is under development, and Catanese says it will be available in the first half of next year.But Meiosys is not the only company preoccupied with sharing computing resources around the data center. EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC), for one, is already well established in the market following its acquisition of VMware Inc. earlier this year (see EMC Completes VMware Acquisition).

The key to success for Meiosys lies in forging partnerships with vendors such as Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ), IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM), and Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW), which are all devoting massive resources to grid computing (see IBM Announces New Grid, Linux Cluster Wins, and Sun Unlocks Grid for $1).

Meiosys already has a reseller agreement with its Palo Alto neighbor HP to integrate MetaCluster HPC with HP's Linux Cluster Software Solutions Stack. Catanese is tight-lipped on progress with other companies, but says announcements will be coming soon.

With its latest round of capital under its belt, Meiosys is also planning to double its 35-strong workforce during the next 18 months, according to Catanese.

The Gallic financial influence is no coincidence, considering the company's genetics. Meiosys started life as Toulouse-based Cimai Technologies back in 2000, but even then the firm's leaders had their eye on the U.S. market.Former Thales SA (Paris: HO) execs Marc Rougier and Marc Vertes were the driving force behind Cimai. Now Rougier is COO and Vertes chief scientific officer of Meiosys.

Cimai Technologies changed its name to Meiosys in 2001, set up sales and marketing in Palo Alto two years later, and officially established its headquarters in the U.S. last month.

— James Rogers, Site Editor, Next-gen Data Center Forum