San Francisco – June 23, 2010 – At the Structure 2010 conference on cloud computing, Chris Pinkham and Willem van Biljon, former Amazon executives who led the development of the Amazon EC2 public cloud service, today announced that they are launching Nimbula. Nimbula’s business and technology focus is on blending EC2-like scale, agility and efficiency with private infrastructure customization and control.

Nimbula has been operating in stealth mode since early 2009 with $5.75 million in Series A funding from Sequoia Capital and VMware. Headquartered in Menlo Park, California, Nimbula is one of eleven finalists debuting at Structure 2010 Launchpad.

“Cloud computing is a game changing market opportunity and Nimbula is uniquely positioned to capitalize on it,” said Roelof Botha, General Partner at Sequoia Capital. “As the team leaders behind EC2, no one has a greater understanding of this emerging architecture and how to adapt it to enable large organizations to fully benefit from the co-existence of public and private cloud services.”

A Cloud Operating System

Today Nimbula also unveiled details of the technology that provides the foundation for its first product, Nimbula Director, a comprehensive cloud computing operating system that efficiently manages on- and off-premises IT resources on customer-controlled infrastructure. Nimbula Director delivers utility grade computing and empowers IT innovation behind the firewall. Unlike other enterprise cloud solutions, Nimbula provides for linear scaling to thousands of nodes and automated hands-off installation and data center management. Fine-grained policy-based authorization and network security combined with metered bursting into public clouds such as Amazon Web Services offer unmatched control and visibility.

“We want to help customers see beyond the false dichotomy of public versus private clouds by delivering a powerful solution that enables them to embrace cloud computing without the risk,” said Chris Pinkham, co-founder and CEO of Nimbula. “Our solutions allow customers the opportunity to combine the operational efficiencies of the public cloud with the control, security and trust of today’s most advanced data centers.

Experienced Leadership

Prior to founding Nimbula, Pinkham was Vice President of Engineering at Amazon and leader of the group that planned and developed Amazon EC2. Prior to joining Amazon, Pinkham founded the first ISP in Africa, which was acquired by UUNET.

Co-founder and Vice President of Products Willem van Biljon led the Amazon EC2 development effort. Prior to joining Amazon, van Biljon was a co-founder of Mosaic Software, which was acquired by S1 Corp.

Pinkham, van Biljon and Sequoia’s Botha have served as Board members since 2009. Today, Nimbula announced that VMware former CEO and co-founder, Diane Greene, also has joined the Board.

Other members of the Nimbula management team are Martin Buhr, Nimbula Vice President of Sales and Business Development, and Reza Malekzadeh, Nimbula Vice President of Marketing. Most recently, Buhr spent four and a half years with Amazon Web Services where he led business development and sales for Amazon EC2, and served as Business Director for EMEA. Malekzadeh spent more than eight years at VMware in its Palo Alto headquarters and in EMEA. He was previously VP of International at Akimbi, which was acquired by VMware.

Product Launch Planned for Fall

Nimbula is currently in beta with half a dozen large international customers in the financial services, technology and healthcare industries. The company plans a formal product launch and ramp to sales in the second half of 2010.

About Sequoia Capital

Sequoia Capital provides venture capital funding to founders of startups who want to turn business ideas into enduring companies. As the “Entrepreneurs Behind the Entrepreneurs”, Sequoia Capital’s Partners have worked with innovators such as Steve Jobs of Apple Computer, Larry Ellison of Oracle, Bob Swanson of Linear Technology, Sandy Lerner and Len Bozack of Cisco Systems, Dan Warmenhoven of NetApp, Jerry Yang and David Filo of Yahoo!, Jen-Hsun Huang of NVIDIA, Michael Marks of Flextronics, Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen of YouTube, Dominic Orr and Keerti Melkote of Aruba Wireless Networks, Jonathan Kaplan of Pure Digital, Tony Hsieh of Zappos and Omar Hamoui of Admob. To learn more about Sequoia Capital visit www.sequoiacap.com/us/technology.

About Nimbula

Founded by the team that developed the industry-leading Amazon EC2, Nimbula delivers a comprehensive cloud operating system that uniquely combines the scalability and operational efficiencies of the public cloud with the control, security and trust of today’s most advanced data centers. Nimbula is headquartered in Menlo Park, California and has a development team in South Africa. For more information, visit http://www.nimbula.com.

Media Contact for Nimbula:
Amber Rowland

© 2010, SaaSChronicles. All rights reserved.

Related Posts: