Hosting software provider Ensim Corporation Monday unveiled Ensim Unify, a multi-service Operations Support System (OSS) for the hosting industry jointly developed by Ensim and Microsoft. Ensim Unify provides a single infrastructure for provisioning, managing and metering services on the Linux, Unix and Windows platforms.
“Our industry is growing from simply hosting Web sites to delivering higher value services,” said Kanwal Rekhi, president and CEO of Ensim. “Ensim Unify will deliver the next-generation software infrastructure necessary to rapidly and profitably deliver these services to the market.”
Ensim Unify will offer out-of-the-box support for Microsoft Exchange 2003 and Web sites built on ASP.NET. Ready-to-deploy snap-in software enables hosting service providers to quickly deliver services. Hosting service providers can also create and integrate custom-built services using a service integration framework. The Ensim Unify platform and snap-in ASP.NET Web site hosting software are available immediately. The Exchange 2003 snap-in software will be available late in the third quarter of 2003.
Ensim Unify supports both wholesale and retail distribution of hosted services, allowing allocation of bulk service resources to resellers, who in turn can allocate the resources to other resellers. Resellers can flexibly combine and provision resources into targeted service plans for end-customers. Also, Ensim Unify enables integration of systems along the supply chain. Resellers can tie their storefront and billing systems into the hoster’s Ensim Unify system using Web services interfaces over the Internet.
“As the industry expands, hosting service providers will need the same set of multi-service OSS capabilities that have long been in use in other industries,” said Joshua Beil, vice president at Tier 1 Research. “Ensim and Microsoft are responding to the market’s demand for a flexible industry-standard platform that can economically be extended to support new technologies and services.”