About

Polytropo Systems is a startup business that develops systems software to increase the serving capacity of cloud infrastructures for data-intensive applications. Commercial applications typically run on computing facilities consisting of numerous machines privately owned by a company or offered as public service by a provider. The computing cost is lowered with an infrastructure that is shared across multiple applications to improve the hardware utilization and reduce the capital and operation expenditure. A company that uses independently these resources is often called a tenant. The existing resource virtualization techniques either introduce overheads that reduce the system capacity or limit the performance and security isolation among competing tenants. Also, the operating system causes excessive delays in data-intensive applications, which reduces the user-perceived performance. We have developed innovative technology that moves critical system services outside the operating system and runs them separately for each tenant. Thus, the competing tenants are isolated from each other with respect to performance, security and software bugs. We have experimentally shown that we can run multiple instances of the same or different data-intensive applications and maintain intact the throughput and latency of each application unlike existing systems that cause performance drop at high utilization.

Solution & Product

We have designed and implemented the Diciclo system framework that intercepts the requests of application to I/O services (e.g., the filesystem) and transfers them to system services running outside the operating system. The advantages of our solution include both the efficient transfer of the control and data traffic from the application to the services at user level but also the execution of the services at user level. Our framework permits each tenant of a shared infrastructure to run its own services on each machine and be isolated from the other tenants. Additionally, the framework enables each tenant to rely less on the operating system and as a result to be less vulnerable to potential attacks or software bugs of the shared system software. We have experimentally shown that our technology improves substantially the utilization of the hardware resources that run data-intensive applications in cloud infrastructures. Thus, a business can reduce the capital investment and operation costs to serve a number of users. As a result, a business can become more competitive and offer better prices for its products to a broad user base consisting of business customers or individuals. Our technique affects a wide range of applications across several industries that critically rely on computing to serve their users. Our product consists of systems software and configuration that our customers run between the unmodified applications and the existing data storage infrastructure.

Innovation & Scalability

We develop innovative systems software that improves the efficiency of the IT infrastructures with direct benefit to the capital and operation expenditure of our customers. It also allows cloud providers and system vendors to offer products that require fewer hardware resources for a particular capacity of users or applications. Thus, they improve their competitiveness and offer products or services at lower costs. Our unique value proposition is the offering of systems software that our customers run between the applications and the storage infrastructure to achieve efficiency, performance and security. Our product is compatible with existing standard system interfaces and complements the products of data storage vendors. We do not replace the existing storage systems but enhance them with efficient client software at the application side. We foresee the industry to remain cost-sensitive for the upcoming years due to the potential geopolitical risks and inflation surge. Our product can address the rising cost of the IT infrastructure by improving the operation efficiency and reducing the overheads from the virtualization software or the operating system. Additionally, it improves the performance and security stability by serving the tenants through private system services.

Traction & achievements

The company is a spinoff startup officially approved by the Governing Council of the University of Ioannina. We have published our technology in top scientific peer-reviewed conferences and the most prestigious related academic journals. We have filed the intellectual property of our technology at the US Patent Office with 30% of the ownership retained by the University of Ioannina. After the company's establishment in June 2024, we are actively exploring partnerships with business customers interested to evaluate our product and quantify the offered benefits. Our initial target is medium-sized companies in IT-demanding sectors, such as web hosting, cloud services or finance.

Team & Why Us

The company currently consists of the two founding members, S. Anastasiadis as CEO and G. Kappes as CTO. Stergios brings his experience from designing and developing innovative software systems, managing funded projects, motivating and guiding researchers, and working in several countries across Europe and North America. Giorgos brings hands-on experience in the design and implementation of Diciclo and other software systems related to multitenant cloud infrastructures, along with datacenter IT administration skills. Our company is based in northwestern Greece that recently emerged as a popular destination for multinational companies (P&I, Teamviewer, PwC, Deloitte, Accenture, etc) opening new development centers to attract engineers from the University of Ioannina and other universities of the surrounding area. Our initial target is to grow the company for a period of several years before considering a liquidity event, such as selling to a larger firm. The decision will be based on the general market conditions and the return interests of potential investors that will support us. Alternative exit strategies include exploitation of our intellectual property through royalties from third parties interested in our technology.

Funding Needs

Today, the company is in the first year after its establishment and is actively seeking pre-seed funding sources. Based on our projections, we estimate our company to reach the breakeven point halfway during the fourth year of operation. Possible challenges that we take into consideration include hiring the needed engineering personnel and approaching potential customers based outside Greece or Europe.