Marathon Runs Off With $12M

Virtualization specialist Marathon Technologies picked up $12 million in Series B funding today as the vendor plans to expand into disaster recovery and grow its international operations. (See Marathon Gets $12M.)

The round, which brings the startup's total funding to $26 million, was led by Sierra Ventures, and also included Atlas Venture and Longworth Venture Partners.

Marathon CEO Gary Phillips told Byte and Switch that a sizeable chunk of the new money will go to product development. "One of the decisions that I made when I came here a couple of years ago was to extend our product line," he says. "We're looking to expand our product into areas like disaster recovery." The exec refused to divulge roadmap specifics, adding only that this will involve "a renewed push around server consolidation and blades."

Although Marathon describes itself as a virtualization player, the startup should not be confused with the likes of VMware and Virtual Iron, which create virtual machines on individual physical servers. (See VMware to Spin Out, Vendors Push Virtual Security, Virtual Iron Announces 3.5, and Virtual Iron Inks iSCSI Deal.)

Instead, Marathon's everRun High Availability (HA) runs across two x86 servers, with the goal of offering application redundancy and failover for databases and similar systems. (See Virtualization Startups Gain Steam, Marathon Intros EverRun, and Marathon, TimeSpring Team.) The software creates a virtual Windows server environment where the application is installed, operated, and managed. The two servers then appear to the application as a single standalone server, with just one identity and IP address.Marathon is also looking to expand its international presence, particularly on the other side of the Atlantic. "In Europe, we started with the U.K. and Germany -- we will expand into France, Sweden, Italy," says Phillips, adding that the startup is also looking at Middle East expansion. "We're going to have an announcement in the next few weeks that will lay it all out."

At the moment, Marathon's workforce numbers around 70 employees, although Phillips expects to add around 20 more staff members over the coming 12 months.

Some of these hires will support the vendor's plans to tackle the U.S. federal government market, particularly in areas such as defense and homeland security. "By the nature of what they are doing, they have a lot of applications that require extremely high levels of availability," says Phillips.

The CEO told Byte and Switch that Marathon has around 1,200 customers for its software, although only one of these, the Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto, Canada, has been made public.

Marathon is not the only vendor playing in the availability space, and the startup faces competition from application failover products such as Microsoft's Cluster Server and offerings from Neverfail and Double-Take. (See Double-Take, Isilon Go Public, Double-Take Seeks IPO, Neverfail Enhances Scope, and Neverfail Makes Inroads.)Like Marathon, these vendors have focused their efforts on Windows-based data, although Phillips' desire to target blades suggests that the startup may broaden its target to include Linux, which is widely used on blade servers. "I think that there are customers that will be looking for that," says Lauren Whitehouse of the Enterprise Strategy Group."

Recently public Double-Take, thanks to its partnership with Dell, has gained the most momentum in the Windows space, according to Whitehouse. This prompted another availability startup, SteelEye, to add Linux support to its software last year, she explains. (See SteelEye Expands Offerings and SteelEye Supports IBM.)

It remains to be seen whether Marathon Technologies will go down this route, although Phillips told Byte and Switch that the startup is also looking to boost its ability to support virtual machines from the likes of VMware and Virtual Iron.

James Rogers, Senior Editor Byte and Switch