OpSource Banks On Infrastructure Services Market

Called OpSource, the company plans in the first quarter to launch a private-label strategy under which ISPs and carriers can sell its services under their own brands.

OpSource's management team includes former executives from companies including Metromedia Fiber Network (MFN), SiteSmith, Exodus and Uunet.

The company's strategy for now is to go after the customers of defunct or struggling ISPs and carriers, said Treb Ryan, founder and CEO of OpSource, based here. Ryan founded MSP SiteSmith in 1999.

"To grow in this down market, we are taking over existing infrastructure customers from ISPs that are finding it hard to support them," Ryan said. "Service providers will not have to build out an infrastructure or platform, but instead [can tap into our service quickly."

OpSource is supplying its initial 15 customers with Internet infrastructure management services akin to those offered by SiteSmith, which was acquired by MFN in February 2001.

But unlike SiteSmith, OpSource's goal is to move beyond the Internet infrastructure and Web-based application management realm and into managing a wide variety of applications, Ryan said.

Backing this effort is SigmaSystem, an IT infrastructure management platform OpSource developed in-house. The platform, which manages network-device and application performance, is built on open standards to work with disparate technologies.

SigmaSystem includes provisioning, auditing, security, monitoring, storage and backup, performance optimization and program management services, Ryan said.

"I think many service providers are going to want to private-label this," said Andrew Schroepfer, founder and president of Tier 1 Research. "They're offering management across much more than Web applications, and many ISPs and carriers still haven't been able to build a good management platform."

OpSource is recruiting referral and technology partners. Thus far, nine partners, including Equinix, Switch and Data and Aptegrity, have signed on.

Customers that are currently signed up for the OpSource service include Microsoft, WaldenMedia, Pillar Data Systems and Butler Johnson.