Every major storage vendor knows it needs to offer it. A privately owned company that has it is looking pretty good. The "it?" Virtualization software, which helps companies squeeze more out of their storage. The company that has it? DataCore Software, which last week received $30 million in venture capital.

Virtualization software overrides direct servers-storage connections so companies can more-efficiently distribute storage capacity among applications and projects. DataCore has been shipping its SANsymphony software to customers for about a year.

"At most, 45% of storage capacity is actually being used," says George Teixeira, president and CEO of DataCore. While he's confident in his software, Teixeira needed financing to prove the company was financially solid as well. "Customers want to know if we have extra money in the bank to make it through next year," he says.

Arun Taneja, an analyst at Enterprise Storage Group, likes DataCore's prospects. "SANsymphony is key to bringing some semblance of order to the chaos that's storage networking," he says. After Hewlett-Packard spent $300 million this year for competitor StorageApps, Teneja adds, DataCore also looks like a prime acquisition target for a big systems vendor.