Former Novell CTO Takes Helm At Ensim

Rekhi retired from his position as CTO of Novell in 1994. He joined the company in 1989 when Novell acquired Excelan, a networking company he founded in 1982.

Actually, Rekhi was only semi-retired. Since leaving Novell he formed The IndUS Entrepreneurs, a venture fund and support organization for entrepreneurs of Indian descent. The organization has invested in about 20 start-ups.

Rekhi initially bumped into Ensim in 1998, when its founders S. Keshav and Rosen Sharma came to him for advice.

"I didn't like their business plan a whole lot when they first came to me," said Rekhi. "It was a plan to simulate traffic on networks, but I didn't see it having a broad appeal in the market."

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Rekhi gave them some advice and the founders came back with a plan for Ensim and a product called ServerXchange, which takes a physical server and slices it up into several virtual private servers. Up to 100 private servers can be run on a physical box. In doing so, a service provider does not have to add new servers for new clients or services, but instead can allocate space for that customer on the physical server.

"I thought virtualization of servers was a smart idea, and I could see the need for it in the Web hosting space," Rekhi said. "So I invested a small amount in them."

About a dozen other investors including Worldview Technology Partners, New Enterprise Associates and Goldman Sachs signed up as Ensim expanded its strategy to Web hosting automation. Ensim has raised more than $85 million.

In May, Ensim introduced WEBppliance, a software-based Web hosting automation solution for Windows.

With its browser-based drag-and-drop capabilities, WEBppliance for Windows promises to significantly cut down on Web hosting site-development time, said Ensim executives.

Rather than load IIS onto servers and then configure the servers manually according to Microsoft Web hosting architecture guidelines, WEBppliance's Web-based GUI lets service providers automate the process of setting up, configuring and maintaining Windows-based hosted Web sites.

Rehki's strategy moving forward is to broaden Ensim's reach into markets outside of Web hosting. "As software as a service becomes a dominant delivery vehicle, we see Ensim acting as the automation platform behind these offerings," he said.

For now, Rekhi's top goals are to reach out to customers and help Ensim and its Web hosting customers reach profitability.

"Web hosting companies need to start making a profit, and what is needed is automation, automation and automation to make that happen," said Rekhi.

Rekhi's customer-first policy is not an empty promise from a newly appointed CEO, said Demian Sellfors, CTO of Web hosting and design provider MediaTemple, Los Angeles.

"We were one of the first customers he came out to see," Sellfors said. "And when it came time to see if his customer-first message was for real, he came through."

When MediaTemple was having problems integrating Ensim's platform with another product, Sellfors called Rekhi and Ensim came up with a solution, he said.