Trigence Taps HP's Roth

Its all change at the top of data center startup Trigence, with former Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) exec David Roth replacing Chuck Colford as CEO. Colford, who co-founded Trigence back in 2002, will remain involved with the company as a board member.

Prior to Palo Alto, Calif., Roth was VP of sales and business development at Consera Software, which was acquired by HP last year, and has also spent time at Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) and NYNEX.

The new boy is now on a hunt for cash to add to the $6.1 million already received in funding. Existing investors include VenGrowth Investment Fund Inc., BDC Venture Capital., Axis Investment Fund, and Sbemco International. Roth tells NDCF he plans to start fundraising again this spring, and expects to clinch the round by the fall. “We will be starting at no less than a $10 million round,” he says.

The 22-strong Ottawa-based firm is also looking to expand significantly during 2005, according to Roth. “We will establish U.S. headquarters probably sometime around the fall,” he says. “We will be somewhere between 30 and 40 [employees] by the end of the calendar year.”

The company has also changed its focus, from data centers in mid-sized companies in North America and Europe, to now targeting global and large enterprises.But, what about technology? The startup emerged from stealth last year with its first product, a software that drags applications from one part of an IT infrastructure to another (see Startup Shifts Applications).

The AE software uses a combination of C, C++, and Java to “wrap” individual data center applications and move them to a central database or another server, removing the need to manually reinstall the applications.

The initial launch of AE was only available for Linux, although Trigence recently launched an enhanced version, AE 2.2, which extended support to Sun Microsystems Inc.'s (Nasdaq: SUNW) Unix-based Solaris platform (see Trigence Supports Sun Solaris).

Further enhancements are planned around Unix, according to Roth. Specifically, this will include IBM Corp.'s (NYSE: IBM) AIX and HP’s HP-UX, he adds.

However, the Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) behemoth will not be neglected. “I promise that we will have Windows support at some point in the future,” says Roth, although he is unwilling to give too much away on the company’s specific product roadmap.Part of the challenge for Trigence is the fact that the startup is playing in an area where a number of established vendors, such as VMware Inc., IBM, and HP have already set out their stalls.

Nonetheless, Roth sees connection rather than conflict in the future. “I look at [the Trigence solution] as very compatible –- a number of these firms will be great partners for us.”

This is where Roth’s HP experience could prove invaluable. During his time with the Palo Alto firm, the exec was the worldwide program manager for HP’s OpenView Automation Manager product. Like IBM’s Tivoli platform, HP’s OpenView is seen as a key provisioning technology for data centers.

But again, the incoming CEO is keeping his cards close to his chest, and is unwilling to give too much away. ”You will see us very active this year in forming strong partnerships,” he says.

— James Rogers, Site Editor, Next-Gen Data Center Forum0