An Operating System Powering Over 90% of the World's Servers Is Older Than Many of its Developers — Now This Company Wants to Disrupt It

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The following post was written and/or published as a collaboration between Benzinga’s in-house sponsored content team and a financial partner of Benzinga.

A new operating system was born 30 years ago. Considered the answer to years of extensive research, the Linux operating system (OS) marked a major milestone in the computing space.

Linux can be found running on almost any device in the world — from smartphones to cars and supercomputers to home appliances. While the market for operating systems behind personal computers is shared between 2 companies — Apple Inc. APPL and Microsoft Corp. MSFT, Linux has long been a goliath of information technology (IT) enterprises — the undisputed OS in servers. Linux OS supports all 500 supercomputers, more than 93% of the 1 million popular servers, and 90% of the world’s cloud infrastructure.

But Linux was built before the cloud revolution, and though it powers the majority of the world’s cloud servers, it was not built to run cloud-based applications. This, plus the fact that Linux has been around for so long without any major upgrade unlike its competitors Windows and MacOS, poses serious cloud cybersecurity risks as more and more data is being stored on the cloud. With the surge in cyberattacks like the SolarWinds hack, there may be a need for novel technology to replace the current underlying technology in cloud platforms and servers.

NanoVMs Inc. (a company currently crowdfunding capital) is reportedly developing a new operating system for cloud-based computing based on a disruptive technology that could possibly dethrone Linux in the global servers and cloud infrastructure space. This technology is called unikernels. Considered an effective approach to combat cloud cybersecurity, unikernels offer in-depth security combined with higher performance at low cost. NanoVMs claims to be the sole provider of unikernel platforms in the world.

NanoVMs offers managed services for both public and private cloud environments using a company's existing IT infrastructure and says it helps companies run applications faster and at a low cost using its state-of-the-art cloud infrastructure.

NanoVMs’ Disruptive Technology?

One great advantage of cloud technology is it allows multiple users to log in to a server remotely and access data. While this is an advantage, it can open a door for cyber-attacks and data breaches that can cost a company its fortune — more than $100 billion would be needed to fix the mass damage caused by the SolarWind hack.

An application deployed to data centers, virtual machines (VM), or the cloud runs on the system’s underlying OS, which is most likely Linux. Deploying an application using NanoVMs' unikernels technology is basically the same, but the application and the OS become 1 small, secured virtual machine. Because the application is compiled with the OS components only needed for a single operation, the application is smaller than the traditional VM of that application.

The compiled application can run independently on the cloud without requiring an underlying OS such as Linux. The benefits could include the application running faster, at a lower cost, and with less complexity. NanoVMs boasts that its technology can make applications boot up and run 10 to 20 times faster than a container.

Better yet, unikernels do not have multiple programs to run concurrently. This may prevent attackers from successfully running their malicious programs on servers.

NanoVMs states that unikernels are highly secure compared to traditional OSes. This is because they do not have a shell, which eliminates one of the major vulnerabilities in Linux known as shell code exploitation. Personal information for over 140 million U.S. residents was stolen when hackers used shell code exploitation to remotely execute a code on a web application belonging to Equifax EFX.. 

Learn more about the current raise for NanoVMs via StartEngine here.

The preceding post was written and/or published as a collaboration between Benzinga’s in-house sponsored content team and a financial partner of Benzinga. Although the piece is not and should not be construed as editorial content, the sponsored content team works to ensure that any and all information contained within is true and accurate to the best of their knowledge and research. This content is for informational purposes only and not intended to be investing advice.