Click the image to view WHIR tv's interview with Steve Lesem, CEO of Mezeo, about the company's recent collaboration with SoftLayer.
(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — The past couple of years has seen an explosion of activity in cloud computing innovation, making cloud storage technology a highly lucrative market.
With Amazon and Rackspace launching their own cloud storage offerings in the past few years, respectively called S3 and Cloud Files, many start-ups have decided to follow suit.
Steve Lesem, president and CEO of Mezeo, recognized this opportunity in the lack of cloud storage services available for web hosting and IT providers.
Together with the former heads of VeriCenter, a managed service provider he previously co-founded, Lesem launched cloud storage solution software firm, Mezeo Software (www.mezeo.com).
“What we saw in the hosting industry was that new cloud computing solutions were attracting customers who in the past might have gone to a shared hoster or a dedicated unamanaged hoster,” says Lesem. “We felt like this trend was going to pick up speed. We said, Amazon wrote their own solution, as did Rackspace – so what are the other hosting providers and the IT service providers that are embedded in telecos going to do to address this threat to their business?”
It was then that Lesem and his team decided to create the industry’s first deployable, white label online file sharing and collaboration solution, Mezeo Personal Cloud Storage.
The solution lets service providers offer their own branded file storage service solution, allowing providers to increase their own revenue and attract new customers.
With the ongoing recession, it is difficult for service providers to accurately predict their future storage requirements to purchase storage on an upfront basis.
The flexiblity of Mezeo Personal Cloud Storage lets web hosts to offer multiple cloud storage services, including API based Cloud Storage, and unique solutions for dedicated and virtual servers.
By providing a monthly recurring, “shared success model”, Lesem says that Mezeo’s customers “become successful delivering cloud storage services to the marketplace as [Mezeo] becomes succesful with them.”
Within just over six months of its launch, Mezeo has gone onto build a small team of partners comprised of IT service providers, value-added resellers, software as a service providers, telecos, and of course, web hosts.
Lesem singles out SoftLayer (www.softlayer.com) as one Mezeo Premier Hosting Partner, in particular, that he feels shares a similar “vision on how to deploy the cloud”. For this reason, it was inevitable that it signed the web host as its launch partner.
“We knew that with that launch partner we were going to learn so much critical information that was going to affect our future development plans and our future capabilities and what we do for this market,” says Lesem. “They’ve worked hard with us, they’ve invested, and it’s really been an exciting time for both companies. I’ve heard a lot of companies that have said, ‘If SoftLayer is doing this we want to look at this.’”
Softlayer has successfully completed a cloud storage beta powered by the Mezeo Cloud Storage Platform and will enter the cloud storage market next month. The web host will also offer cloud storage solutions to resellers.
The company recently presented at two key cloud industry events — Under the Radar (www.undertheradarblog.com) and Cloud Slam ’09: Clarity in the Cloud (www.cloudslam09.com) — which offered many benefits.
At the events, Mezeo was able to meet with different venture capital firms for potential funding, broaden its exposure throughout the industry, and network with potential customers and partners.
Hosting will continue to be a main focus for Mezeo, offering an evaluation account of the same Personal Cloud Storage service, albeit with limited storage restrictions, for all those interested in testing out the software.
“We want to be thought of as leaders on the whole notion of the cloud, and specifically the cloud as associated with hosting,” says Lesem. “Cloud storage isn’t just about giving people the ability to store or retrieve a file via the Internet.”
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