BLUE LANE TECHNOLOGIES

Founded: February 2003, in stealth mode until November 2005

Headquarters: California, USA

Management: CEO Jeff Palmer, most recently president of GetThere, an online corporate-travel procurement solution; and Allwyn Sequeira, senior vice president of product operations, previously senior vice president of technology and operations at netVmg, an intelligent route control company acquired by Internap Network Services in 2003.

Funding: US$5 million in November 2003 from Matrix Partners and Benchmark Capital; US$13.4 million in September 2005 in Series B funding led by Duff Ackerman & Goodrich and previous investors; US$8.3 million in November 2006 from Presidio STX and previous investors.

What the company offers: VirtualShield software is packaged as a virtual appliance and works at the hypervisor layer to protect virtual servers from threats in passing traffic. Once deployed, the software takes snapshots of the virtual servers on the hypervisor and "maintains a consistent inventory of virtual assets, such as open ports, active services and applicable application protocols," the company says. VirtualShield watches for traffic that violates known security and patching policies. The software then corrects the threat and prevents the virtual machine from being exposed to the vulnerability. The software provides real-time protection as virtual machines are moved throughout a data center, because it does not require IT managers to apply new code or security signatures, Blue Lane says. Through a protection content service, the company offers automated code and security-signature updates for virtual machines.

Why it's worth watching: With VirtualShield, Blue Lane is applying to the virtual realm its patch-proxy management technique for physical servers. "The same software acts as a security-abstraction layer above the hypervisor layer but below the guest [operating system] layer, or user space," reads a Yankee Group report on products for securing the virtual enterprise. This patch approach could address the challenge of managing multiple virtual machines, analysts say. "The company says it solves an emerging problem of patch management for VM users: In 10-to-1 VM-to-host scenarios, which are common, VM sprawl creates a potential drudge-work nightmare of finding potentially hundreds of VMs tucked into dozens of VM hosts, and applying patches to all those VM instances," the Yankee Group report reads.

How the company got its name: In airports, traffic designated as blue-lane can go through security checkpoints faster and with fewer obstructions than travelers in other lanes. The company's virtualization-security software does the same, company officials say.

Who's using the product: Chevron, eSpeed, Globe Motors, Mercury Marine, Raytheon and UCLA.