OpSource Gives Private Clouds An Enterprise Boost

Company:

Headquarters: Santa Clara, Calif.

Technology Sector: Software

Key Product: OpSource Cloud

Year Founded: 2002

Number of Channel Partners: Uses channel for referrals and is exploring giving VARs private label option

Ideal Channel Partner: Enterprise-focused solution provider

Why You Should Care: OpSource builds on the infrastructure-as-a service cloud computing model pioneered by Amazon.com with a cloud-based offering that adds enterprise-class security and performance.

The Lowdown: Enterprises are aware of the efficiencies cloud computing offers, but some looking to get their feet wet in the cloud have been put off by fears that the security and performance of cloud offerings won't be up to snuff.

Cloud computing vendor OpSource sees these concerns as a selling point. Next week, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based firm will launch OpSource Cloud, an offering that takes the infrastructure-as-a-service model of Amazon.com's Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) and adds virtual private network and a performance-optimized architecture that's designed to meet the stringent requirements of enterprises.

Richard Dym, chief marketing officer for OpSource, says the goal is to provide enterprise-class cloud infrastructure for vendors that deliver their applications over the Web. By making all of the hardware, processes, procedures and systems invisible to customers, OpSource removes the costs associated with business operations and speeds software development cycles.

"Our philosophy is that it's not in the DNA of a software company to run a 24/7 business," said Dym." The entire infrastructure that we've built in our virtual private cloud is the same as what enterprises are used to working with in their data centers."

OpSource Cloud's embedded VPN lets customers determine how much public cloud access they want to reveal. To ensure a high level of performance, OpSource Cloud uses multi-tier architecture that gives customers access to the firewall at the network level and enables them to put their own security rules in place, Dym said.

"This allows us to have a service level agreement with sub-millisecond access time between devices, with the same performance you would get with a network cable," Dym said.

The merits of public versus private clouds is a topic of growing debate, but Amazon's EC2 has done much to highlight the advantages of the former, Dym said. Amazon EC2 has also solidified the market's desire to buy computing capacity online and pay by the hour on an as-needed basis, but it doesn't sufficiently meet the needs of enterprises, he added.

OpSource, which started out as a SaaS vendor, views the channel as a source of referrals for strategic integrators and IT consulting shops, but not VARs. However, Dym says there could be a role for the channel in the future, as OpSource is exploring the possibility of offering solution providers a private-label version of OpSource Cloud.

"To get the most benefits from the cloud, you need a combination of the world Amazon created and the one of enterprise IT. We've done everything Amazon has done, but in a solution built for enterprises," Dym said.