10 Open Source Companies to Watch

Company name: Untangle

Founded: 2007

Location: San Mateo, Calif.

What does the company offer? It offers a commercial-grade open source gateway to small businesses for blocking spam, spyware, viruses, adware and unwanted content on the network. (Compare Messaging Security products and Secure Web Gateway products.)

Why is it worth watching? The company is aiming at being a leading IT supplier for small and midsized businesses, and is developing other open source IT tools to go along with its network security wares.

How did the company get its start? Dirk Morris and John Irwin spent three years writing code to drastically reduce the cost of proprietary software and the complexity of open source deployments. The pair used dozens of open source technologies and has open sourced 95% of the code they created.

How did the company get its name? Company founders say the Untangle name reflects their mission to eliminate IT complexity for small businesses.

CEO and background: Bob Walters used to land F/A-18 Hornet fighter aircraft on aircraft carriers before selling Teros, an application security start-up, to Citrix Systems. He has held executive and/or general management positions with Securant, Linuxcare, Informix Software and Red Brick Systems. He is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis and was a Guggenheim Fellow at Princeton University.

Funding: Two rounds totaling $18.5 million with CMEA Ventures and Rustic Canyon Partners.

Who's using the product? Customer list of 5,000 includes Genesis Physicians Group, Bishop Kelley High School, Franklin Academy, University of Georgia and Maine State Employees Association-SEIU Local 1989.

Company name: Qumranet

Founded: 2005

Location: Sunnyvale, Calif.

What does the company offer? Its product -- Solid ICE -- provides a hosted desktop virtualization environment that runs in the corporate data center.

Why is it worth watching? The company is tapping Linux kernel virtualization technology called KVM to provide IT with centralized desktop and image management, high availability and provisioning for any desktop operating system. It also provides the connection protocol and management system.

How did the company get its start? Qumranet wrote KVM and open sourced the code taking advantage of processor advancements from Intel and AMD, and improvements in Linux scheduling and memory management.

How did the company get its name? Named after the Qumran caves in Israel, where the Dead Sea scrolls were found.

CEO and background: Benny Schnaider has been in senior management, engineering and strategic consulting roles at many companies, including Cisco, Amdahl/Fujitsu, Hitachi, IDT, Sun and 3Com. Schnaider has a master's degree in engineering management from Santa Clara University, and a Bachelor of Science in computer engineering from the Technion (Israel Institute of technology).

Funding: Sequoia Capital and Norwest Venture Partners.

Who's using the product? Commercial Aircraft Division of Israel Aerospace Industries and several Global 2000 companies, which the company does not make public.