The 600 customers relying on managed service provider Telenisus range from Fortune 500 companies such as R.R. Donnelley to start-up ASPs such as Intelliservices, but a common thread binds them,Telenisus has something they don't.
For health-care ASP Intelliservices, a gap was filled with Telenisus' specialization in security and network configurations. "Our applications are constantly being transformed by changes in technology, and along with those changes comes changes in the network configurations, an area [Telenisus] deals with," says Hermanth Rao, president and CEO of Intelliservices, Charlotte, N.C.
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The MSP employs more than 50 security experts with security certifications from Check Point Software Technologies, Cisco Systems, RSA Data Security and Microsoft. Telenisus' managed hosting services includes eight layers of security from intrusion detection and firewall administration to managed authentication and VPN services.
"Security is the core of our hosting infrastructure," says Gordon Reichard, president and CEO of Telenisus. "We've had it all along, as opposed to wrapping it into the hosting offering as an afterthought like so many other [vendors] have done."
In a recent study, research firm Meta Group gave Telenisus a rating of 3.9 out of five on its ability to meet 10 security layers. The MSP beat out IBM, WorldCom, Exodus Communications, EDS and Genuity.
Among these service providers, IBM and EDS have referred security customers to Telenisus, Reichard says. The scope of the deals extend beyond managed security and security consulting. Telenisus is a member of IBM's Hosting Advantage program, which refers hosting customers to Telenisus when the services contract falls outside IBM's areas of expertise.
Other large vendors also refer customers to Telenisus. When FileBridge needed a storage solution that could support its document-management services business, EMC pointed the start-up to Telenisus, which now manages EMC storage boxes, security, and network and application performance for FileBridge.
"Part of what we couldn't do was watch the boxes continuously," says Rick Seifert, vice president of customer services at FileBridge, Bloomington, Ind. "We didn't have the staff, but we are hosting documents for our customer, and their customers in turn, which means the system has to be up at all times."
Telenisus stepped in to manage and monitor FileBridge's platform out of its network operations center (NOC), which is staffed around the clock.
It is not uncommon for customers to start out with one Telenisus service,in many cases, security or storage,and slowly add other services, Reichard says.
Both FileBridge and Intelliservices signed on for Telenisus' Rapid Start hosting service, which takes ISVs and ASPs through four development phases such as a testing environment in which Telenisus engineers and security probes "pound on the application," Reichard says.
The foundation of Telenisus' offering is its "built for e-business platform," which automates, integrates, monitors and manages services and support processes. The platform resides in Telenisus' hosting centers, co-located at Equinix. The services housed on the platform are monitored in Telenisus' NOC, which gives customers a view of their network and application performance via a portal.
Customers are responsible for resolving applications issues, but the trouble ticket remains Telenisus' responsibility until an issue is resolved.
In addition to supporting service providers, Telenisus also partners with them under an alliance program. Referral partners receive a percentage of revenue as a commission. Solution partners sell Telenisus' services. These partners receive those services at a discount. The MSP has about a dozen referral partners and 10 solution provider partners.
