“We’re starting some discussions with IBM partners in Toronto and the U.S.,” said Alan McMillan, CEO of Avokia Inc., whose Java-based products were introduced in February.
“Most of our customers want to buy from someone who they’ve been buying their databases, middleware and infrastructure software from, and we’d like to plug right into that.”
“We’d like to talk to large systems integrators that want to offer middleware to companies that run mission-critical applications.”
Avokia’s products are apSpeed, a data caching application which moves database information to the application tier to increase performance; and apLive, a clustering tool that allows transaction replication across multiple databases.
Technology partners
Technology partners include IBM, Oracle, Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard.
The bulk of its sales now are through Avokia’s sales force, which works with consultants from these partners.
“Our goal over time is to move everything through channels,” said McMillan. But, he added, “the reality is we need more market share and more demand for what we’re doing before (business) partners can be more successful.
“We’re still relatively unknown.”
Recent wins include two Ontario independent software vendors: Clay Tablet Technologies of Toronto, which makes a content management application for resale and hosting; and HiPoint Marketing Inc. of Markham, which makes Web-based marketing tools.
Avokia products can help hosting companies such as these give improved service level promises, he said.
Avokia was founded several years ago by ex-IBM developer Frankie Wong, who worked on DB2 at IBM’s database lab here. Searching for funding, eventually coming to McMillan, who was entrepreneur in residence at Vancouver’s Ventures West. Wong became chief technology officer and McMillan became CEO.
In January, Globespan Capital Partners and SAP Ventures put $7.4 million in second round investments into the company.
Twelve months from now McMillan hopes to have signed up to four integrators. Ultimately he envisions that growing to 10 large integrators and a few specialty VARs.
On top of that there would be at least 10 application service providers.