Loudcloud floats new Web site services concept

MENLO PARK, CALIF. - Former Netscape wunderkind Marc Andreessen may always be identified with the "face" of the Internet - after all, he did develop the very first Netscape browser. But his new venture, Loudcloud, is all about the Internet's derriere: the servers, disk arrays and systems management software on which the 'Net sits.

The company earlier this month formally unveiled what it calls Smart Cloud Services, which are aimed at creating large, complex Web sites. Loudcloud basically is a service provider: It takes your e-commerce application and loads it, along with Loudcloud's own Opsware software, onto big Unix servers hosted by a third party, and then runs the whole thing. You pay Loudcloud a monthly fee.

So far, Loudcloud's plan sounds like what a number of Internet service vendors are doing. What's unique, says Forrester Research analyst Ted Schadler, is what Opsware adds to this: It handles a wide range of administration chores that previously had to be done by hand.

"They're a big, managed, on-demand provisioning system," Schadler says. "So a Web site can just handle whatever comes along."

Unlike other hosting services, which often feature an application suite from a single vendor, Loudcloud is "application neutral," Schadler says. "They're not trying to be all things to all people. They're not offering things like electronic catalogs or sell-side commerce applications," he says. "They're focusing aggressively on the foundation software services."

For instance, if a user's application is in danger of crashing under heavy volume, a manager can tell Opsware to add more capacity, says CEO Ben Horowitz, a former Netscape executive who formed LoudCloud along with company Chairman Andreessen and others. The software automatically starts extra rack-mounted computers and disk arrays. Within minutes, it can load Web server software, tune the operating system kernel, reconfigure the Domain Name Server and balance the traffic load among the various computers.

On top of Opsware is a set of additional programs, dubbed "Smart Clouds," which are designed for different parts of a Web site: the Web server itself, as well as application servers, databases, and security.

Opsware works with a standard set of systems, such as Sun Solaris servers, EMC disk arrays, iPlanet server software and the Oracle8i database.

So far, seven companies have signed up with Loudcloud, and one site is already in production.

Monthly fees are based on the number of servers, bandwidth use and disk storage. Fees start in the "tens of thousands of dollars," Horowitz says.