Qumranet
IndustrySoftware
Founded2005
FounderBenny Schnaider
ParentRed Hat

Qumranet, Inc. was an enterprise software company offering a desktop virtualization platform based on hosted desktops in Kernel-based Virtual Machines (KVM) on servers, linked with their SPICE protocol. The company was also the creator, maintainer and global sponsor of the KVM open source hypervisor.

History

The company was founded in 2005 by CEO Benny Schnaider, with Rami Tamir as president, Moshe Bar as CTO, and chairman Dr. Giora Yaron.[1] Qumranet had raised $20 million in two financing rounds from its founders, Norwest Venture Partners, Cisco Systems, and Sequoia Capital, in addition to investment by the founding partners.[1]

The company's first product, named "Solid ICE", hosted Windows and Linux desktops on central servers located in a data center.[2]

The Ra'anana-based company developed a virtualization technology for IT data centers.[1][3]

From a very low-profile Israeli startup the company made waves with the rapid acceptance of KVM into the Linux kernel, and their Solid ICE desktop virtualization platform has received serious attention.[4][5][6][7]

Avi Kivity was the lead developer and maintainer of the Kernel-based Virtual Machine project from mid-2006, that has been part of the Linux kernel since the 2.6.20 release in February 2007.[8]

Qumranet was on the Gartner Group's 2008 list of "Cool Vendors," an award given to small companies with advanced technology.[9]

On September 4, 2008, Qumranet was acquired by Red Hat, Inc. for $107 million.[10][11][12][13][14][15]

Key executives

References

  1. ^ a b c Lan, Shlomit (28 May 2017). "Dr. Giora Yaron: Startups need carrots not sticks". Globes.
  2. ^ Savitz, Eric (4 September 2008). "Red Hat Buys Virtualization Company". Barron's.
  3. ^ Wrobel, Sharon (5 September 2008). "Red Hat Buys Qumranet". Jerusalem Post.
  4. ^ Businessweek.com Archived March 13, 2008, at the Wayback Machine, "Sequoia, Norwest, Storm Fund Israeli Startups"
  5. ^ Heise.de Archived March 11, 2008, at the Wayback Machine, "Virtualization solution KVM will be in the next version of Linux"
  6. ^ ITbusinessedge.com Archived 2009-01-07 at the Wayback Machine, "Barbarians at the VMware Gate"
  7. ^ "Skating on Solid ICE Desktop Virtualization"
  8. ^ Interview: Avi Kivity Archived 2007-04-26 at the Wayback Machine on KernelTrap
  9. ^ Zadok, Shahar (26 May 2008). "Six Israeli start-ups among Gartner "Cool Vendors": The Cool Vendors 2008 report covers 172 companies". McClatchy.
  10. ^ "Red Hat Advances Virtualization Leadership with Qumranet, Inc. Acquisition" (Red Hat press release)
  11. ^ "Red Hat buys Qumranet for $107M. What does this mean for KVM and SolidICE?". BrianMadden.com. Retrieved 2018-06-26.
  12. ^ Denne, Scott (5 February 2013). "Qumranet Founders Emerge With $26M for Latest Cloud Venture, Ravello". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 5 February 2020.
  13. ^ Vance, Ashlee (4 September 2008). "Red Hat Buys a Seat at the Virtualization Table". New York Times. Retrieved 5 February 2020.
  14. ^ Grimland, Guy (5 September 2008). "Qumranet Makes Exit With $115m Sale". Haaretz. Retrieved 5 February 2020.
  15. ^ Cohen, Sagi (29 May 2019). "Israeli Serial Entrepreneurs Found Fourth Startup". Haaretz. Retrieved 8 February 2020.
  16. ^ Businessweek.com "Qumranet, Inc."

External links

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