Ever wonder what announcing a $15 million fundraising round in the middle of a recession would do for your web traffic?  It would probably look something like this:

The apex of the chart is Monday and Tuesday of last week, both of which shattered our previous record for daily unique visitors that dates back to our company launch from stealth mode last September.  While I hid the numbers, the baseline traffic we were getting previously was very respectable, so the announcement clearly made a big splash.

The bulk of the traffic to the site last week resulted from the great press coverage our announcement generated.  Kudos to Kyla Kenney, our PR guru, for doing a great job getting the word out to press and analysts, and a thank you to Andy Cohen and the Citrix team for assisting with our press activities.

We have become a bit addicted to watching the web stats go up, so I guess it’s up to us now to keep the excitement about Virtual Computer and NxTop growing.

I thought it might be fun to start the new year by highlighting our most popular posts of the past year (well, the most popular posts since we started blogging in July):

5. When we emerged from stealth mode in September, there was a lot of interest in who we were and what we were doing. We posted brief bios of our management team and that post continues to be a very popular one: Meet the Virtual Computer Management Team

4. As we were wrapping up for some much needed time off during the Thanksgiving holiday, we posted about a milestone we were very excited about: First NxTop Beta is Live!

3. Our company launch made it to a popular virtualization blog and we decided to mention it: Virtual Computer Isolates Hardware, OS, Apps and User Data for More Secure Laptop and Desktop Management

2. The public launch of Virtual Computer just before VMworld generated a lot of attention: Virtual Computer Launches

1. Our most popular post of the year was one of our last posts of the year which showed NxTop running two operating systems and each operating system running a 3D graphics intensive program (Google Earth and Quake): 3D Graphics in Virtual Machines Running on a Bare Metal Client Hypervisor [Video]

You can view our full blog archives and keep reading in 2009. We will have more videos, more news of the NxTop launch, articles on technology and other posts talking about things we find interesting. If there’s something you want to see us post or cover, please let us know in the comments.

Happy New Year!

Greetings from VMworld in Las Vegas, where earlier today we announced something we’ve been having a really hard time keeping a secret: NxTop. Since we just announced it today, you might not know what NxTop is. Quite simply: NxTop makes it easy to manage thousands of PCs (either laptops or desktops) just as you would manage one – without agents and without compromising the end user experience in any way.

How do we do this? We’re combining a bare-metal PC virtualization platform with a powerful management console for IT admins (with a nice web interface!) – which means that PC management just got a whole lot easier and more secure.

We’ve shared our plans for NxTop with real world IT administrators and industry analysts and they’re letting us know this is what they need:

“NxTop is the first desktop virtualization product I have seen that delivers extensive manageability and rigorous security benefits while respecting the individual business needs of mobile users,” said John Christly, manager of Information Technology Security and HIPAA security officer for Memorial Healthcare System of Miramar, Florida. “My department is managing a large number of laptops and as a healthcare organization, security of these laptops and the data on each of them is a top priority. In the past few years, we’ve read of too many companies that have experienced data loss or security breaches. We are always seeking new and innovative methods of system and data security. Therefore, I welcome a product like NxTop, which will fill a market need that has been unmet for quite some time.”

For more information, check out our website, which we just relaunched today with full product information and use cases.

Leave a comment and let me know what you think of NxTop or, if you’re at VMworld, stop by our booth for a demo (we’re in booth #562). I’m eager to hear what you have to say.

We take great pride in being a customer-driven company.  You may ask, “How can you be a customer-driven company when you haven’t launched a product yet?”  The answer is by getting out there and talking to members of the IT community early and often.

When you’re a startup in stealth mode, it is easy to hide in a corner and do nothing but solve complex technical problems.  At Virtual Computer, we’ve taken a different approach and have been out there talking to people since day one.  In fact, we talked to hundreds of IT professionals while we were still in stealth mode and it is their insights on everything that is broken about PC management today that have led us to build a truly unique product.  But more on that soon…

For now, we are enjoying life after stealth mode by seeking out new ways to engage with the IT community.  The latest is the Virtual Computer Facebook Page.  Check it out.  Become a “fan.”  With VMworld only a few days away, it is a great time to keep an eye on us.  Who says what happens in Vegas has to stay in Vegas?

Also, don’t forget that we have a LinkedIn Group as well if that is more your speed.

We’ve officially launched Virtual Computer, Inc. and couldn’t be happier! After many months of hard work, we’re excited for you and the rest of the world to learn more about what we’ve been working on.

Our press release — Old Road Computing Emerges from Stealth to Launch as Virtual Computer, Inc. – is available on our brand new website and explains that “Virtual Computer will deliver solutions that capitalize on virtualization technology to reduce the cost of managing corporate PCs while improving their reliability, security, and usability.”

It’ll be a bit longer before we announce exactly what our product is and does (let us know who you are and we’ll make sure you are among the first to hear about our upcoming product).