Vieo Develops Channel Base

Vieo is preparing to launch its first product, the Vieo 1000 AAIM (Adaptive Application Infrastructure Management) appliance, a hardware/software solution that automatically manages and provisions infrastructure to ensure application performance.

"There has always been a big gap between the management of applications and the management of the underlying IT infrastructure," said Ed Taylor, CEO of Collective Technologies, an Austin, Texas-based solution provider and member of Vieo's advisory board. "Where I see Vieo positioned is to potentially fill this gap."

Vieo joins vendors such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems and Computer Associates International in the race to release products that support on-demand computing.

"Many of the solutions [discussed by other vendors] are very far from reality. Maybe in two years they will have something that resembles the vision," said Bob Fabbio, president and CEO of Vieo and a venture capitalist who founded Tivoli Systems, now a unit of IBM, in 1989.

Vieo's appliance, currently in beta, is slated to ship next month, Fabbio said. Pricing will be based on the number of nodes managed, with a typical implementation starting at $100,000.

The Vieo 1000 AAIM appliance has a controller blade and two management blades that each support up to 12 nodes. By adding 12-port expansion blades, the system can scale to manage up to 144 nodes.

The appliance is connected directly to the devices it manages via Ethernet cables so it won't be affected by network problems, according to Vieo.

That contrasts with software solutions from other vendors that run on the infrastructure they're intended to manage, Fabbio said.