Headquarters: Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.

Technology Sector: Services

Key Product: NewServers Bare Metal Cloud

Year Founded: 2007

Number of Channel Partners: 30 to 40 worldwide

Ideal Channel Partner: Enterprise-focused solution providers

Why You Should Care: NewServers' year-old reseller program offers a dedicated server cloud service -- a Hardware-as-a-Service (HaaS) model with pricing for end users of all needs and sizes.

The Lowdown: Less than two years old, NewServers looks to provide the benefits of hardware-as-a-service with hourly billing plans and automated provisioning and without what its founder calls the security risks and unpredictability of virtual private server (VPS) environments.

"We loved the whole cloud server concept," said NewSevers President J.P. Gagne. "We can build applications, we can do all kinds of stuff we couldn't do before. But we hate virtual servers. I've never used them myself in any of the server environments I've managed because they add an extra security risk."

In May 2008, the company added a VAR program targeting traditional hosting resellers, ISVs, Web designers and application developers. The program comprises API access, volume discounts up to 20 percent and NOC-level support access, plus the ability to add servers, cancel servers, enable an inventory list in real-time, provide active server information, provide current billing information and have server reboot control.

"The core cloud server offering is pretty well-defined at this point, and what we're adding to that is different storage options, including a high performance storage solution that's geared to the HPC [high-performance computing] community," Gagne said. "We're also working on building this out to have fully working examples of how to use NewServers to solve problems. We're building a program on how to build a server farm, for example, and we have another one on disaster recovery and another is a graphics rendering farm for large computer animation projects. We want a company or customer to be able to take that and then modify it to troubleshoot specific needs."

For VARs, NewSevers offers a straight 10 percent recurring commission on revenue collected through the relationships a partner brings in, Gagne said. The company does not have an active partner recruitment effort, but is heavily focused on the 30 to 40-odd partners it has in North America, plus its burgeoning efforts in the U.K. and South America. The company is looking to get its name out there as an alternative to established cloud server offerings like those of Enomaly and Amazon's EC2.