The top 10 tech startups for 2008

Hot tech startup: Montego Networks

Founded: 2007

Tech breakthrough: Montego's hyperswitch (software plus firewall) uses policy-based switching to route traffic to third-party security applications within the virtual network.

Business problem addressed: Provide security within a virtual network.

What the technology does: Montego regulates traffic among virtual machines, and between the virtual environment and the physical environment. Policies determine which virtual machines may communicate with one another. The product features virtual network partitioning, a firewall, and virtual network discovery capabilities.

How the technology works: Virtual servers are connected to each other via a switch (called a v-switch in VMware environments), which in turn is connected to Montego's hyperswitch. The switch intercepts traffic from the v-switch and matches the traffic against its security policies. If the traffic is acceptable, it is then routed back to the v-switch and delivered to its final destination. Using proprietary algorithms, the hyperswitch defines policy controls and also routes traffic to third-party security applications. Because each third-party application must only scan selected traffic, instead of all traffic, the application uses fewer resources to do its job, and that improves performance. Identity-based controls can allow or deny a user access to a specific virtual server or allow access to a virtual machine but not to certain content on that machine. Supported security apps include those from Blue Lane, Catbird, Reflex and StillSecure.

Forward spin: Montego says it will add support for Citrix, Microsoft and Virtual Iron virtualization technologies in the third quarter of this year.