Symbium Steps out of Stealth

After three years in stealth mode, data center startup Symbium Corp. has emerged blinking into the sunlight, with aspirations to make it big in the lucrative server management market (see Symbium Launches ISAC).

So, who are these guys? The firm was founded back in 2002 by Jay Litkey, who also set up BlackholeVDN, a startup for distributing video across the Internet. Prior to that, Litkey spent time at Nortel Networks Corp. (NYSE/Toronto: NT) designing and developing telecom control plane systems.

Since its foundation, Symbium has racked up $7.75 million in funding. Last years initial round was led by VenGrowth Capital Partners Inc., and the company has since picked up additional financing from MMV Financial Inc. (see Symbium Gets Series A Funding and Symbium Lands $2M).

Litkey is now applying his background in managing telecom systems to the data center. Symbium’s core technology is the somewhat grandiosely titled Intelligent Secure Autonomic Controller (ISAC). This consists of a half-length PCI-X card and a software engine for managing servers.

The PCI-X card is plugged into a server, and the software can then be used to perform a range of management tasks, according to the Ottawa-based vendor. These include blocking unauthorized software and monitoring what are known as "runaway processes," when a specific task starts to consume too much CPU resource. “We can kill the one offending session,” growls Litkey, who serves as the startup’s vice president of technology.