Computer startup is brimming with confidence

Office manager Jen Gaeta is surrounded at Virtual Computer's holiday party. (Aram Boghosian for The Boston Globe)

WESTFORD - Alisher Fatykhov has spent his career dodging economic crises and landing on his feet.

Perhaps that stems from dumb luck, but it's more likely due to the ongoing demand for his software engineering skills.

This current economic crisis hasn't spared Fatykhov from a layoff, but three days after losing his job, Virtual Computer added him to its team of 30 employees.

Fatykhov, 35, could have held out for a more established company than the fledgling startup. But the Russian native did his homework and decided the company is at the helm of a software revolution.

"I think the company really will succeed and become something major," said Fatykhov, a principal software engineer at Virtual.

The company's backers at Highland Capital Partners and Boston-based Flybridge Capital Partners, agree. In December 2007, the two venture capital firms each invested $3 million in Virtual.

"What they're doing is new and exciting, and they've brought in very smart people to deliver that in a broad and elegant way," said Peter Bell, a general partner at Lexington-based Highland. Bell said the company's cofounders have great track records.

Dan McCall, Virtual's president and chief executive officer, was the cofounder of Guardent, a Waltham-based software security provider purchased by VeriSign in 2004.

A year earlier, Alex Vasilevsky cofounded Lowell-based Virtual Iron, providing virtual technology for computer servers.

Today, as Virtual Computer's chief technology officer, Vasilevsky has shifted his focus to personal computers - a gold mine of potential profit as they proliferate by the millions across the globe.

McCall said he plans to hire about 20 more engineering, finance, sales, and support staffers in 2009.

Virtual's technology inserts a layer of software between providers like Microsoft Corp. and a company's bank of personal computers. That layer acts as a command center, intercepting updates, security patches, and operating system upgrades that are normally managed one computer at a time by managers of information technology.

"We want to make it as easy to manage 1,000 computers as it is to manage one," McCall said, echoing the concept by which Vasilevsky launched the company.

Fatykhov and the other software engineers are refining a beta version of the software in an effort to get it to market by March. The staff members are pounding complex computer languages into their keyboards and churning out a simple software package that McCall and Vasilevsky are hoping will catch fire. Among other benefits, it will help companies reduce IT staffing.

So despite the growing number of layoffs elsewhere around the country, Fatykhov remains gainfully employed - a pro at dodging economic time bombs.

In the early 1990s while attending Tashkent University of Information Technologies in Uzbekistan, he watched the fall of the Communist Party.

By 1998, Russian banks began collapsing, including the one at which Fatykhov was employed. Fatykhov posted his resume online and was hired by a New Jersey software company; he migrated to the United States in June 1999.

But by 2001, the dotcom crash ended his assignment. His most recent job was outsourced this year, leaving him out of work Oct. 17. He joined Virtual on Oct. 20, and in November learned he had passed the exam to become an American citizen.

"In my career," said Fatykhov, "I've been in startups a couple of times, and they didn't turn out well. But when you look at the management and the market, you understand that this is a dynamic place."

Joyce Pellino Crane can be reached at crane@globe.com.