Cloud Computing Start Up with 15+ IPs Is Looking for Investor

Opportunity Snapshot

Investment Opportunity

The company Fractioned (fractioned.net) converges servers, storage, switch & router into a single-form-factor (i.e single appliance) to exponentially bring down the total cost of ownership.

Fractioned has the potential of being the present and future leader in the cloud & convergence space. It is based out of Lancaster, MA (USA) & Bangalore, Ind

 Fractioned uniquely converges disparate physical infrastructure and disparate virtual infrastructure into a “Single Converged Form-Factor”, exponentially bringing down costs & complexity.

→ Disparate physical infrastructure refers to separate server, storage, switch and router

→ Disparate virtual infrastructure refers to separate desktop, server, storage and IO virtualization

In short, my cloud-based management software (along with 15+ IPs) make an all-in-one server, storage, switch & router out of any high-performance commodity server. 

I have used open source software (stable & proven) + high performance commodity hardware + my intellectual property to bring about this product & solution.

There are no hardware investments as Fractioned does not maintain any hardware inventory (thus no risks). We build this all-in-one server storage, switch and router using the latest high-performance commodity servers (Eg. the Intel 80 core server)
The main highlight is my cloud based management software along with our intellectual properties that allow us to accomplish this.

Note: the current day server technology provides comparable and or faster performance/speed when compared to most ASICS & FPGAs that are used to make switches, routers and most storage appliances. This is a huge shift in the industry that Fractioned has identified and capitalizing on at it’s earliest stage)
Eg. Intel 2-3 years ago proved 20 gbps line rate in both directions using 10 gigabit NICs on their servers, now their processors are even faster.

The business sell-side has Remote Professional Services and Plug-and-Play Delivery Model (the entire product is pre-configured at our hardware provider's site by us and then shipped to the customer. The customer simply plugs in the power cord and is good to go).

Fractioned architecture/solution compared with current architecture/solutions

Current Datacenter Architecture and Solution

The datacenter today consists of 3 main components:

1) Servers - forming the front end - usually run VMware/Citrix Xen type server virtualization software - very expensive license arrangements with vendor traps.

2) Storage (NAS/SAN) - forming the back end - expensive hardware + extremely expensive yearly licenses to run various software components. Eg - NetApp, EMC etc. - have vendor lock-ins and proprietary traps

3) Switch & Routers - (redundant setting for fail-over) - these connect the storage and the servers (and also different types of storage) -expensive and have vendor lock-ins and proprietary traps.

Fractioned Architecture and Solution
One High-Performance Commodity Server running open source operating system ( Eg. Ubuntu) with our cloud-based management software + our intellectual properties.

No need for separate servers, separate storage (NAS/SAN), separate switch and routers. One appliance acts and performs all needed functions. We eliminate all software licenses. One appliance acts and performs all needed functions.

Kindly contact me for more details.

Competitive Advantage

Right now, the datacenters today have 3 components i.e servers, storage and switch & routers. They expensive hardware and extremely expensive software licenses the recur yearly. They also have vendor lock-ins and traps.

So, when you converge all the 3 into one server hardware you exponentially bring down the cost and give equivalent or more performance. This the logical next step in the enterprise cloud computing with convergence being the highlight.

Rationale for the deal

Exponentially bring down cost in the enterprise via convergence & cloud computing which should automatically catapult the demand for our type of product & solution.

Cost Comparison -- CNode (our single product) VS Servers (running VMware) + NetApp Storage + Cisco (redundant) switches in a Disaster Recovery (Fail-over) Scenario

Server hardware (with VMware with Site Recovery Manager - SRM) + NetApp Storage hardware (with synchronous/asynchronous replication, clustering & monitoring licenses) + Cisco switches at primary and disaster recovery site:

$120,000 in just license fees which recurs yearly + additional cost of hardware that has to be purchased separately + extra cost of consultation, design & on-site deployment charges to put the entire solution in place (usually quite hefty) + couple of months usually to put together from start to end (training etc).

With 2 CNodes:

Under $40,000 (includes hardware, software, remote consultation) --- here we are making $20,000 profit
No licenses for software & hardware. We only charge for support, here the first year’s support is included in the $40,000
Equivalent or better performance
2 - 4 weeks to from design to deployment & training
The flexibility derived is something that money cannot buy with proprietary hardware & solution
Eliminated vendor lock-ins & proprietary traps - the client can add components of their choice to increase the storage, network, processors etc.
Exponential reduction in TCO, power & cooling costs and real estate

Note: we charge more or less depending on the size of the client (dynamic costing to fit different market entities globally)

Use of financing

About 950K for two years which would include office in bangalore and san francisco or san luis obispo area (California) and about 3-5 developers + a technical architect/marketing professional. (Plus, all the developers would also help in pre-sales, remote consulting & support - a sort of multi-faceted functionality)

PS - Currently, I am actively developing a cloud-based management GUI that controls the virtual machines, storage (NFS & CIFS), replication (DRBD) and the switch and router. This Web GUI should give us full intellectual property and would be one of the highlights of our offering. I am looking to finish this in about 4 - 6 months.

The product has had 2 defense deployments (in U.S). This was using open source software (mainly enhanced existing web GUIs) + commodity hardware a few months ago.

So, from the product angle it has been deployed in the recent past with a focus on first consulting and then building a custom product. However, in the future i would like to show an appliance (Eg. the new 8 socket 80 core intel server) with our branding & management software and show a 3 - 6 year growth plan to the clients (i.e the ability to grow the hardware on-demand -- add processors, disks etc).

From a sales perspective, i have started to build relationships with prospective system integrators, resellers and consultants who might be interested to go to market with us.

I have 2 hardware providers (original Supermicro/AMD/Intel distributors) who will provide us all hardware & operating system level support, and also our appliance branding. They have also shown interest to further sell our product to their own client base).

Another slightly different approach that i have had is to build relationships with large Indian software outsourcing/services companies and show them another way to generate income as they seem to be quite saturated in their respective markets. The basic idea is to plug in our entire solution as a part of their offering and we do everything for them with the exception of front end sales / marketing (we would train/certify their sales/marketing personnel) -- this is in the works.

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