xkoto, Inc. (www.xkoto.com), the database virtualization company, announced that it was named to the first annual listing of the InformationWeek Startup 50, revealed recently in InformationWeek Magazine and on InformationWeek.com.

InformationWeek’s Startup 50 is a list of the top 50 business technology startups selected by InformationWeek readers and editors. Companies were selected in a three-step process that involved nomination, online voting, and editorial vetting.

The technologies and the companies behind them were evaluated on the following criteria:

• Innovation and their ability to inject new ways of doing things into business processes
• Value, which is reflected in lower costs, increased sales, higher productivity, or improved customer loyalty
• Enterprise-readiness, meaning that a product or service scales and can be deployed and managed as necessary by IT pros

xkoto is the developer and marketer of GRIDSCALE, which virtualizes the database infrastructure, enabling businesses to distribute application load horizontally across multiple instances of commercial databases running on clusters of low-cost hardware, mid-range systems and virtual machines. With GRIDSCALE, businesses can improve performance and scalability and achieve continuous availability for business-critical applications. For more information about GRIDSCALE, visit http://www.xkoto.com/gridscale.

“More than ever, IT organizations are looking for solutions that help them solve critical business problems and enable them to do more with less,” said David Patrick, CEO and President of xkoto. “Increasingly, businesses are choosing GRIDSCALE to ensure 24x7 operations, dramatically improve database performance and drive down operational costs. Being named to the InformationWeek Startup 50 list is a clear indication that we have developed a technology that meets an urgent and growing need for businesses of all sizes.”

This latest nomination follows xkoto being named “Startup of the Year” in 2008 by InformationWeek at its InformationWeek 500 conference. A panel of CIOs from major companies chose xkoto over the competition for delivering innovative technology that offers enterprise value for a modest investment. Visit http://www.xkoto.com/informationweek for more information.

“It was difficult to limit ourselves to 50 startups because there’s a lot of exciting companies out there,” said Andrew Conry-Murray, Business Editor, InformationWeek. “That said, we believe the InformationWeek Startup 50 have innovative solutions to critical business problems and are worthy of enterprise consideration.”

InformationWeek editors and readers identified young companies that are ready to address the critical challenges facing the enterprise. Whether it is securing networks, cutting costs or streamlining IT operations and business processes, the InformationWeek Startup 50 provides IT professionals and executives insight on new and innovative solutions from the named companies.

The full list of the InformationWeek Startup 50: Business Technology Companies To Watch, along with analysis by InformationWeek editors, can be found online at http://www.informationweek.com/news/services/saas/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=216600068.