Hexagrid Keeps Cloud Infrastructure Simple by Focusing on End Users

A beverage company solves a problem that is easy to understand — they quench people’s thirst. However, St. Louis-based Hexagrid focuses on a rather complicated problem: providing infrastructure for the cloud. Hexagrid is a software company that specializes in cloud enablement. They provide what is called Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), allowing customers to build their own private clouds or customized applications in the cloud.

Hexagrid’s goal is not to allow complicated IT to get in the way of actual business functions. They keep focused on making life easy for the end customers — the people who use applications built on top of Hexagrid’s infrastructure. Their CFO and VP of Strategic Development Joe Seibel compared this to the electric company: “It’s not how you run the generator; it’s how people use the electricity that matters.” Founder and CEO Suresh Mandava saw the opportunity to build Hexagrid’s technology out of a lifetime of experience combined with a critical technical innovation. He spent 20 years building and designing IT infrastructure for companies like IBM, MasterCard, and Express Scripts. In 2007, when Intel released their VT-enabled processors, chips with the ability to run multiple operating systems at the same time, he saw an opportunity to build scalable infrastructure solutions that became the company’s core technology. By November 2009, Hexagrid’s first product came out of beta testing, and they launched their version 1.5 in October of 2010. Since then, the company has gotten some tremendous traction. Hexagrid’s total clients and revenues have doubled quarter after quarter since the fall of 2010. In May of 2011, the company signed on Indonesia’s second largest telecom company as a client. The customer reached out to Hexagrid through their website. (Every entrepreneur dreams of the day when customers call them.) Then, this June in London, Hexagrid won the Cloud Computing World Series Award for the best virtualization product. The company currently has 16 employees around the globe located in St. Louis and in India, with plans to double in size over the next 12 months. According to Seibel, one of the advantages of being in St. Louis has been the help they have received from the Information Technology Entrepreneur Network (ITEN). He said they were critical in getting them connected to the local community, and Hexagrid graduated from ITEN’s Mock Angels program earlier this year. Computer infrastructure may not be easy for everyone to understand, but that has not stopped Hexagrid from teaching their customers how their product can benefit them. Featured image credit: Mattias