Hand In Hand With Solution Providers

New hosting facility @Lightspeed aims to become more than the standard co-location facility. The start-up is looking to partner with solution providers to provide a full complement of managed services to enterprise customers.

@Lightspeed is looking to form partnerships with solution providers involving joint sales, engineering and design.

Solution provider partners will co-locate in @Lightspeed facilities and then jointly market services to customers, although @Lightspeed will maintain an inside sales force, he says.

"We believe the toughest part of bringing in solution providers is the service-level agreements for the end customers," he says. "They are looking for a single point of accountability. So we are looking at partnerships designed around making solution providers a part of the community. It will involve a lot of joint sales, engineering and design."

Nelsen says he expects most partnership agreements to be based around a revenue-sharing model.

@Lightspeed's "best-of-breed approach" is one of the reasons NSN Network Services has been negotiating a partnership agreement to provide wireless redundancy to facility customers, says Michael Sopoke, business development executive at the Denver-based provider of satellite-based broadband and network management services. The company expects to co-locate at @Lightspeed's facility to provide the redundant connection and an on-site network operations center.

In addition, @Lightspeed's decisions to provide a variety of carrier choices at the facility is an another benefit for NSN customers, Sopoke says. "Some facilities have only one carrier or two coming in. @Lightspeed gives the customer a choice."

Despite some solution providers' enthusiasm for the new facility, current market conditions have been challenging for independent data centers, analyst say. High-profile hosting companies, such as Exodus Communications and PSINet, have overshadowed a potentially lucrative business lately with financial woes, executive departures and restructuring.

"Building data centers is an expensive proposition," says Carrie Lewis, an analyst at The Yankee Group. "[Potential companies] need to think very carefully about doing it. Do they know who their customers are and what kind of services they need?"

If hosting facilities are positioned right, they can be in a good position to capture enterprise customers as the market starts to mature, Lewis says. By developing strong relationships with solution providers, hosting companies can position themselves to capture business as "enterprise customers start to look at building out an infrastructure so they can focus more on their core competencies," she says.

@Lightspeed expects to be "to be operating and profitable by December" and will look to expand into a number of midsize markets during the next 24 months, Nelsen says. The company has a single-source investor but is keeping the name of the backer confidential, he says.

The company was founded by a former manager of business development at J.D. Edwards along with two executives from the telecommunications industry.

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