CloudPhysics, a startup with a big-data analytics solution for managing virtualized IT environments in the data center, came out of the woodworks Thursday, brandishing US$2.5m in venture-capital and angel-investor financing.

The company’s product, CloudPhysics, provides virtualization administrators and architects real-time analytics of their physical infrastructure and application workloads. The solution also has capabilities for predictive analytics to determine how a change will impact the overall environment.

Frank Denneman, a senior architect at VMware and a technical advisor to CloudPhysics, posted a blog about the startup, in which he said the company has some IT industry heavyweights on its team, including some who have played key roles in VMware’s success.

“The CloudPhysics team comprises of industry heavy hitters,” he wrote. “Some of these persons invented core features of the vSphere stack while working for VMware, while others made their mark at other industry leading companies.”

The company’s founders are former VMware executives John Blumenthal and Irfan Ahmad.

In addition to having VMware veterans on its payroll, some of CloudPhysics financial backing comes from key figures in the virtualization giant’s development. The list of angel investors in the startup includes Diane Greene, VMware’s first CEO, and Mendel Rosenblum, a University of California, Berkeley, professor who was a co-founder of VMware, in addition to a number of other Silicon Valley heavyweights.

Besides angels, CloudPhysics’ first funding round included Mayfield Fund, a venture-capital firm with more than $3bn under management. Robin Vasan, the fund’s managing director and a board member of CloudPhysics, says the venture-capital firm had been incubating CloudPhysics for the past 12 months.

“Virtualization, and VMware in particular, has become a critical layer of the infrastructure, but that adoption has made it more difficult to understand the configurations and actual performance delivered by next generation data center equipment,” Vasan said.