Opsware Helps Inflow to Accelerate Business, Reduce Costs and Increase Revenue in Managed Hosting Business

HostReview.com
Monday, March 29, 2004; 12:00 AM

San Diego, CA, March 29 (Booth # 232) – Inflow, a leading provider of outsourced technology services, today unveiled that it has successfully expanded its managed hosting business through development of its iServerCare management solution This new solution (generally available April 1, 2004) has already resulted in strategic customer acquisitions, increased revenues, and improved service margins via Opsware Inc’s (NASDAQ: OPSW) IT automation software.

Inflow will be presenting a case study at this year’s Gartner Symposium / ITxpo in San Diego, at 3pm PT on Tuesday, March 30th, detailing their successes and savings realized since deploying Opsware’s software in July of 2003.

Using Opsware, Inflow has achieved

•Industry leading server-to-system administrator ratios: Inflow is now managing over 600 servers with three dedicated staff members; an impressive 200:1 server-to-administrator ratio.

•Greater service quality and security: Using Opsware, Inflow lowered its “mean time to restore” for servers from three or four hours to a record low of 30 minutes.

•Improved security, via reduced time to patch servers: Inflow secures its customers’ servers using Opsware’s automated patching capabilities, which allows them to patch 600 servers in less than three hours.

After a detailed technical evaluation, the company chose Opsware over two other technology providers, based on Opsware’s deep operational expertise resulting from its Loudcloud managed services provider origins, the Opsware platform’s ability to integrate rapidly with new and existing IT management systems, and its strong customer base.

In selecting Opsware, Inflow was seeking to enhance its service delivery model to enable high-margin, high-value application hosting and management services, such as iServerCare, while lowering its cost structure and improving overall service quality for customers.

A key component of Inflow’s service transformation was the ability to scale its business without adding incremental staff to solely support these new services. Opsware helped Inflow to successfully capture its largest account while maintaining existing staffing levels. Without Opsware’s automation software, Inflow estimated it would need to expand its operations staff by 300% to support this new customer’s server management needs.

“Without Opsware, we would not be able to offer the seamless high-value server management solutions demanded by our customers,” said Lenny Monsour, general manager, Inflow Hosting and Infrastructure Services. "Using Opsware as the underlying automation platform for our managed hosting business allows us to automate our customers’ entire server and application lifecycle, with a dramatically lower cost structure and with higher quality and reliability.”