Date: Apr 27, 2015 Author: Mark Anderson Source: bizjournals (
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Ennetix, a startup born at the University of California Davis, has won a $1 million federal grant to develop its tool to improve cloud networking.
The two-year grant will allow the company to build out its business plan and reach out to markets. The software allows users to monitor and manage networks that operate in the cloud.
The Small Business Innovation Research grant is from the Office of Science in the U.S. Department of Energy, and it was awarded earlier this month, said Bis Mukherjee. He is the founder of the company and its president.
Ennetix was developed around the research done by Mukherjee, an engineering professor at UC Davis.
The company started out several years ago with technology to make routers more energy efficient by using analytical management. That might be a good idea, but it's not ready for business yet, Mukeherjee said.
So he recently pivoted the business to using the same monitoring information from routers and managing them with analytical tools to find in real time where networks are wonky.
"Many of the developments we made for the energy problem were applicable to the new problem," he said
With more people moving systems to the cloud, being able to analyze cloud performance becomes more important.
"The inherent assumption is that the network is perfect. But it is not. If the network is wonky, it effects performance," Mukherjee said.
He said users only perceive that their networks are deteriorating if they slow down dramatically, but networks are constantly having imperceptible slowdowns. Ennetix will help administrators spot in real time where problems are so they can do a workaround to fix them, he said.
The software is an overlay which uses network performance data without absorbing all the information on the actual network. It is also independent of the underlying networking infrastructure.
And, fittingly, Ennetix solution itself resides in the cloud.
