It's definitely an ugly day for shareholders of VMware (NYSE: VMW), with the stock down more than 30%. Even so, the company is still growing at a rapid clip because of its virtualization technology, which essentially squeezes more firepower from servers and other tech resources.

In fact, a variety of players are moving into the space. Some of the usual suspects include Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL).

But, of course, there are also some scrappy startups, such as Virtual Iron.

The company has announced a $20 million round of venture capital. The investors include: Highland Capital Partners, Matrix Partners, Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS), Intel Capital (NASDAQ: INTC) and SAP Ventures (NYSE: SAP).

VMware (NYSE: VMW), the leader in virtualization, recently had its IPO. It was a red-hot offering and the company now sports a market cap of $22.8 billion.

No doubt, there are other companies that want a piece of the market. One contender is Virtual Iron.

I had a chance to interview the company's CEO, John Thibault, who has more than 27 years experience in the tech industry. Some of his prior gigs include senior positions at companies like Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) and Convergent Networks.

Q: "Background on the company?"

A: "Virtual Iron was founded in 2003 with the goal of delivering high performance virtualization and management software solutions.

"In June 2005, we introduced the first server virtualization solution with advanced management and policy-based automation capabilities to the market. In October 2006, we were the first to deliver enterprise-class server virtualization and management capabilities on top of an open source foundation.

"With the increasing commoditization of the underlying virtualization technology (commonly called the hypervisor) our philosophy has been to leverage the latest advances in industry standards and open source technologies and build our advanced policy-based management capabilities on top of that. We believe the true value of virtualization is in the management of the virtual environment. And as virtualization becomes more pervasive in the data center, virtual infrastructure will replace physical infrastructure, making these virtual infrastructure management capabilities more strategic than ever."