SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Bromium, emerging from stealth mode to develop technology in the areas of virtualization and security, today announced it has closed a $9.2 million series A round of funding with Andreessen Horowitz, Ignition Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Founded by Gaurav Banga, Simon Crosby and Ian Pratt, Bromium is focused on the delivery of infrastructure solutions that permit enterprises to safely embrace two major trends in IT: consumerization and cloud computing. The rapid growth of new device types and consumer-driven device, application and network choices, combined with increasing mobility and the need for “anywhere, any time access” to enterprise data and applications, poses a significant risk to the enterprise. Similarly, the rapid adoption of cloud computing leaves enterprise data and applications vulnerable to attack. Bromium’s technology will permit the development of a powerful set of solutions to these problems and will help provide a more trustworthy computing infrastructure.
The Bromium Board of Directors is drawn from business leaders and technologists with extensive experience in infrastructure software, virtualization and security: Peter Levine, venture partner at Andreessen Horowitz; Frank Artale, managing director at Ignition Ventures; and George Kurtz, worldwide CTO and executive vice president at McAfee. Bromium has already attracted top engineering talent from Microsoft, VMware, Oracle, McAfee and NVIDIA.
"Today's computing infrastructure is brittle and insecure, and that ought to horrify us given the recent growth of cybercrime," said Levine. "Bromium turns today's security model on its head and exploits virtualization and the latest hardware features to shift the balance of power in favor of the good guys."
Bromium's founders bring decades of experience in researching and solving deeply complex IT challenges and specific expertise in security and virtualization. They are:
- Gaurav Banga (co-founder, president and CEO) - Prior to founding Bromium, Banga was CTO and SVP, Engineering at Phoenix Technologies Ltd., where he drove the company’s transition from the classic BIOS product to the modern UEFI standard, fostering quicker innovation in the PC’s firmware layer. He also led the creation of two new product lines: HyperSpace – a new platform for instant-on and power efficient computing, and FailSafe – a cloud-based anti-theft and device management system for the PC.
- Simon Crosby (co-founder and CTO) - Crosby joins Bromium from Citrix, where he was CTO of the Data Center & Cloud Division. He joined Citrix through the acquisition of XenSource in 2007, which he also co-founded and led as CTO. Previously, Crosby was a principal engineer at Intel, where he led strategic research in distributed autonomic computing, platform security and trust. He was a member of faculty at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory and Fellow of Fitzwilliam College.
- Ian Pratt (co-founder and SVP Products) - Pratt is the chairman of Xen.org and was co-founder of XenSource. Prior to Bromium, he served as vice president of advanced products in the Virtualization and Management Division at Citrix. Pratt also was a member of the senior faculty at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory and Fellow at Kings College, and a founder of Nemesys Research, acquired by FORE Systems in 1996.
"Recent high-profile attacks against business and government systems highlight that threat landscape is dramatically changing at an unprecedented rate," said Kurtz. "Bromium has developed technology with the potential to address these evolving threats, and it is a pleasure to work with a team with such an enviable track record of innovation."
"Virtualization and cloud computing offer enterprises a powerful set of tools to enhance agility, manageability and availability, and enable IT infrastructure, desktops and applications to be delivered as a service. But these benefits are out of reach unless the infrastructure is secure and can be trusted," said Banga. "Bromium has the team, the technology and the investors to enable us to deliver fundamental changes in platform security, from client to cloud."
Follow Bromium on the web at:
- Twitter @brominc, @simoncrosby
- Blog
About Bromium
Bromium will introduce product in the second half of 2011. The company has offices in Cupertino, California and Cambridge, UK. For more information, visit www.bromium.com.