Surgient

About Surgient

Founded in 1999 and based in Austin, Texas, Surgient, Inc. operated as a key player in the private cloud automation and virtual lab management sector. The company was established by Rob Hirschfeld and Dave McCrory, who together created significant intellectual property, including early patents related to cloud computing. Surgient's core offering was the Surgient Virtual Automation Platform, a software solution designed to help IT organizations automate the deployment and management of complex computing environments.

The firm catered primarily to Global 2000 enterprises and Independent Software Vendors (ISVs). Its business model centered on selling its automation platform to these large organizations, enabling them to create self-service, on-demand virtual labs. This service was critical for functions such as software quality assurance/testing, technical training, and sales and marketing demonstrations. By automating the setup and teardown of these intricate environments, clients could significantly reduce testing cycles, improve software quality, and accelerate their time-to-market. The platform supported heterogeneous hypervisor environments, giving it flexibility across diverse customer infrastructures.

Surgient's product suite included specialized applications for different use cases: the Virtual QA/Test Lab Management System (VQMS), the Virtual Training Lab Management System (VTMS), and the Virtual Demo Lab Management System (VDMS). These tools allowed development teams to run automated tests, trainers to deliver hands-on courses remotely, and sales teams to provide customized product demos efficiently. A significant milestone for the company was its acquisition by Quest Software in August 2010. This move allowed Quest to integrate Surgient's technology to bolster its offerings in the private cloud infrastructure market. Prior to its acquisition, Surgient had successfully raised approximately $100 million from a notable list of venture capital firms and individual investors, including Austin Ventures, JAFCO Ventures, Goldman Sachs, Bill Joy (co-founder of Sun Microsystems), and Rod Canion (founder of Compaq Computer Corp.).