SAN JOSE, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 02/06/13 -- Virtual Instruments, the leader in Infrastructure Performance Management (IPM) for physical, virtual and cloud computing environments, has been listed third on Forbes annual ranking of America's Most Promising Companies -- a list of 100 privately held, high-growth companies with bright futures. Virtual Instruments moved up three spots from the 2011 ranking.

Over the course of the past year, Virtual Instruments has seen accelerated growth in all areas of its business. In September, the company announced $27.5 million in late stage venture funding, which it plans to invest in product development and geographic market expansion. Virtual Instruments continued to build out its European presence with the opening of its research and development center in London's Tech City. With its recent success with customers in the Asia Pacific market, the company also plans to expand in the Asia Pacific region.

"We're incredibly honored to be recognized again this year by Forbes. The progress we continue to make is a testament to the agility, dedication, and passion of our team," said John W. Thompson, CEO of Virtual Instruments. "We are all working to build a great company with strong foundational values and products. Our leadership in Infrastructure Performance Management solutions has captured the imagination and interest of some of the largest enterprises in the world."

One metric never says it all. For the Most Promising list, FORBES strove for a holistic gauge of young, privately-held companies, trying to pin down their trajectories by looking at a slew of variables. Over the course of six months FORBES reviewed thousands of applications. The final assessment is based on growth (both in sales and hiring), quality of management team and investors, margins, market size and key partnerships. FORBES turned to CB Insights, a Manhattan-based data research firm that specializes in assessing private companies, to refine the search. Their MOSAIC software scans 45,000 sources to measure a company's health. A new distribution deal, for example, marks a positive signal, while the loss of an executive is a negative. MOSAIC gathers those myriad signals into a final score that FORBES uses as an initial guide in producing the list. After verifying sales numbers, speaking with each company and debating their merits and blemishes, FORBES produces a final ranking.

About Virtual Instruments
Virtual Instruments is a leader in Infrastructure Performance Management for physical, virtual and cloud computing environments. The award-winning VirtualWisdom© platform provides visibility into real-time performance and health of the entire open systems stack along with metrics that assess utilization. Virtual Instruments improves the performance and availability of mission-critical applications while lowering the cost of the supporting infrastructure. Forbes Magazine listed the company third on its annual ranking of America's Most Promising Companies. The company was founded in June 2008 via a spin-out from Finisar Corp.; it has headquarters in San Jose, Calif., and can be found online at http://www.virtualinstruments.com