Managed Service Provider StrataSource continues its quest in forming alliances in the ASP, COLO and Web hosting spaces.
Earlier this month, StrataSource, Inc. (Irvine, Calif.) inked it latest partnership with ASP FutureLink Corp. (Irvine, Calif.)(FTRL).
“We are in the midst of partnering with more ASPs as this whole area is a very important one,” Tom Jones, president, said.
Jones explained to ASP-News that its relationship with FutureLink allows the company to offload much of the service of applications to StrataSource. “That is becoming a bigger topic with ASPs all over,” he said. “The pool of expertise of people who have the technological knowledge needed is shrinking.”
But Jones is quick to point out that isn’t the company’s only strategy. “The ASP market is a unique one for us,” he said. “Our understanding of the application and the databases underneath it is important.”
Under terms of the relationship, FutureLink will offer StrataSource’s LightsOut! database administration and management service in conjunction with its own hosted application services.
Thourhg LightsOut!, FutureLink will be able to provide customers with round-the-clock database monitoring, maintenance and support with the goal of ensuring continuous database availability, helping customers prevent business outages due to application and database system downtime.
The alliance with FutureLink extends StrataSource’s reach of its solutions to customers who are looking to offload management of various IT infrastructure tasks from internal resources to reliable external sources.
Jones talked about the company’s planned phases of growth and referred to phase one as in-house enterprise application. Phase two focuses on actively participating with ASPs, e-commerce companies and COLO. “In 12 to 15 months, we will be in a great position to execute phase three which will be tying phase one and two together, enabling ourselves to move into the role of supporting the B2B networks,” Jones said.
Jones can’t stress enough the importance of a reliable infrastructure. “The demand for this type of service continues to grow,” he said. “You have to take every step possible to make sure the infrastructure stays up. When infrastructure goes down, you loose revenue, customers and brand recognition.”
FutureLink Corp. is a founding member of the ASP Industry Consortium and provides businesses with off-site, Internet-based computing, while its Application Hosting Platforms Division builds application server farms and provides Citrix application server software integration services.
