There's a new kid on the block by the name of HyTrust Inc. that claims it can take the risk out of virtualization. And it has VMware, Symantec, Cisco and Citrix in its corner as budding partners.

It's supposed to be the only player in its space trying to make virtual infrastructure as secure as the physical infrastructure.

The 21-man Mountain View, California start-up - backed by Trident Capital and Epic Ventures with three patents pending - says it wants to push virtualization out of the test environment nest past the proof-of-concept projects and low-hanging server consolidation initiatives into the real world of mission-critical production applications that are precious to the enterprise.

The way to do that, it figures, is to ensure the operational readiness of the virtual infrastructure. Currently it integrates with VMware's Virtual Infrastructure (VI) client user interface.

And VMware, which of course is currently 80% of the market, is supposed to co-market the stuff.

HyTrust's first product is a multi-platform appliance made to function as a central point of control, management and visibility for virtualized environments. The company claims the widgetry will let the enterprise virtualize its most critical tier-one applications and wring the maximum benefits and ROI out of virtualization.

Done HyTrust's way, users connect to the virtual infrastructure using its proxy, which speaks the different protocols of the virtual infrastructure. Each interaction with the system is interpreted in terms of valid virtual infrastructure commands and is authorized based on the user's identity, the virtual object being manipulated, and the operation or command performed.

Besides centralized control and security, the HyTrust Appliance offers directory integration and compliance. It points out that with the higher rate of change in virtual infrastructures, automated controls are essential to match the best practices of any physical environment.

The Burton Group says the HyTrust Appliance is the only widgetry to come to market that meets its security criteria for enterprise-grade production-class virtualization: namely, directory service integration, role-based access controls, secure management traffic, and security logging and auditing of what the administrator does.

HyTrust is supposed to ensure configuration changes are consistent across the enterprise, compliance is enforced, and confidential information is secure. It lets users build a manageable virtual infrastructure foundation from the ground up and lets them demonstrate that the processes and controls are in place to meet HIPAA, SOX, and PCI-DSS requirements.

It centralizes authentication and unifies authorization across multiple APIs, and VMware figures it's a "great example of a technology partner leveraging the extensive set of VMware APIs to create solutions that enable broader deployment and additional use cases for VMware virtualization."

The enterprise-grade HyTrust Appliance is priced by the number of ESX hosts - on a per-CPU socket basis - plus a HyTrust license and runs $1,000 for a two-CPU ESX host along with $3,000 for the HyTrust Appliance. A physical appliance is $7,500. Figure annual maintenance and 24/7 support at 25% of the contract. Initially HyTrust intends to sell direct and says integrators and resellers are interested.

The company intends to make a free downloadable community edition available at the end of April that protects a maximum of three ESX hosts. The widgetry includes authentication and authorization proxy; central audit log; protocol inspection; and configuration manager.

Started in October of 2007, HyTrust got a $5.5 million A round led by Tridant. Its exit strategy is obviously to get bought and both its backers are old hands at that.

It has a dozen beta customers and is currently compatible with ESX 3.0, 3.5 and ESXi; it eventually intends to support ESX 4 and VMware Server as well as Microsoft Hyper-V and Xen. It says it will have consistent, heterogeneous policy enforcement and consistent hypervisor configuration. It will also integrate with systems management products and provide runtime policies for the virtualized cloud. Think XACML policy import, policy-enforced VMotion and SecureDisk.

IDC calculates that the virtualization market will hit $3.5 billion by 2011 and the services market will be worth $11.7 billion.