It seemed like such a great idea. Linux is moving from edge and departmental servers to the data center, so why not offer Linux data center automation, complete with virtualization Linux lifecycle management? Well, maybe it’s still a great business idea, but Levanta wasn’t able to make a go of it.
Officially, there’s still no word that the San Mateo, Calif.-based company is out of business, but former employees say that the company laid them off on April 1. The list of those who were fired ranges from clerical support to Madhur Kohli, the company’s former vice president of engineering.
According to sources close to the deceased company, what put the final nails in their coffin was that after accepting $8 million in second-round venture capital from vSpring Capital and Levensohn Venture Partners in October 2007, the company was unable to show that it could shift its focus to enterprise and data-center-sized Linux management projects.
The venture capital companies, which had already been supporting Levanta, were disappointed when the company’s attempted shift from focusing on its Linux management appliances to becoming a full-time Linux data center automation company came to little. Or, as one former staffer put it, “We were never going to even be able to play in that market. There wasn’t enough there, there.”