ColoWatch, a new managed service provider that aims to furnish enterprise customers with both up-to-the-minute information about performance of their Web sites and maintenance help if the digital corporate facade develops a crack, is expected to officially launch today.
Backed by $2 million in seed capital from unidentified Asian hardware makers, angel investors from the San Francisco Bay area and software maker SoftChina Holdings, ColoWatch says it perfected its technology and processes during 18 months in stealth mode. The company has logged successes with enterprise customers and colocation companies and now executives hope to make its service an on-demand standard in the delivery of managed and monitoring services.
“What we see in the future of ColoWatch, besides multinetwork monitoring and management services, is a plug-and-play situation — where our software would be embedded into equipment so if customers want to activate our service they would just need to push a button,” says ColoWatch CEO Jerry Lin. “Very similar to how OnStar works on General Motors cars you buy a car with a button, but if you dont push it, you dont have to pay.”
ColoWatch is pitching its services directly to enterprise customers such as call-center operator Zomax, which also offers Web hosting services. Zomax is interested in adding ColoWatchs pro-active monitoring, which the service provider says is unique in that it checks the availability of corporate Web sites from 15 backbones.
“The overall objective is that we dont have IT people standing by waiting for something to happen,” says Hector Caban, Zomaxs information services manager.
ColoWatch has struck resale deals with numerous Web hosters — from NTT Communications Verio to newcomer Tri-Valley Data Center, which was formed when an early investor in Colo.com bought a data center from the now bankrupt colocation provider. “We are in the colo business and looking for ways to offer managed services to our customers,” says Tri-Valley President Greg Fish. “The only reason this particular facility didnt do well was because its brand new and Colo.com didnt have any money to market it .”