Emerging Vendors

November 05, 2009

Company: ClearCenter

Headquarters: Orem, Utah

Technology Sector: Services

Key Products: ClearOS network server/gateway and ClearSDN (Service Delivery Network)

Year Founded: 2009

Number of Channel Partners: 200 worldwide

Ideal Channel Partner: Managed Service Providers

Why You Should Care: ClearCenter provides an open service delivery platform that partners can tailor to meet the IT needs of small business and distributed environments that is simple, secure and affordable.

The Lowdown: ClearCenter believes its technology can help businesses empty their racks.

The Orem, Utah-based company has developed an open-source services platform that solution providers can offer on a single box to replace a whole rack full of servers, according to Michael Proper, chairman and CEO of ClearCenter.

ClearOS

"When I talk to channel partners and service providers, they're looking to combine hardware, software and services to customers for a predictable fee. With [ClearCenter], they can buy a box that has it all built on," Proper said. "The bottom line is this is targeted at small and medium [business] environments through channel partners. The value we add to them is taking away their cost of goods. They can pick and choose a generic hardware platform, such as [Hewlett-Packard], IBM, Dell, or white box. One x86 server can replace a rack instead of deploying a Cisco [Systems] device, a file server, a full rack of stuff."

ClearCenter also offers cloud-based services such as remote backup, dynamic DNS, dynamic VPN and remote monitoring and management through channel partners, Proper said.

"We're a platform for service providers. Some [partners] might say, 'I just want the OS. I want it on my hardware.' Others might say, 'I want it in these different locations, but I want to pay for remote backup for servers, multiple Internet connections that come in load balanced to Office A or Office B.' They may want to provide content filtration for their customers, provide limited access for certain users. Or they may want to provide intrusion detection. Some may like to manage the gateway layer," Proper said.

Because ClearCenter's offering touches on a number of different areas, the company competes against the likes of Untangle and IBM's Nitix offerings in some areas, while it fights Novell and Microsoft in some elements on the server side, Proper said.

"There are huge amounts of value that partners can provide and decrease costs for customers," Proper said.