Linesider launches to automate cloud configuration

A new startup focused on automating cloud computing infrastructure management exited stealth mode this week.

Linesider Technologies, founded in 2005 and based in Massachusetts, aims to help automate the configuration of network equipment to deliver cloud computing services.

“Every time something changes from a business perspective, the computer resources, whether it be storage, devices, switches or routers, all have to be reconfigured,” said John Donnelly, Linesider’s executive vice president of sales and marketing. “A lot of that today is done manually.”

Linesider’s Overdrive platform, now in version 3.0, enforces customer-created policies for allowing access to cloud computing services. The platform also uses plug-ins to communicate with virtual server platforms from the likes of VMWare and database platforms such as Active Directory to dynamically reconfigure infrastructure as needed to maintain security and user access policies.

“There’s no more network engineers having to roll trucks to make changes across all the routing, switching and firewall platforms every time a business wants to change the number or location of their computer storage resources,” said Ken Ferderer, Linesider’s chief technology officer. “All that automation and orchestration happens in the network, under the covers, in real time.”

Linesider’s management has no shortage of service provider experience. Its CEO and founder, Harley Stowell, previously helmed an IP communications provider called Linesider Communications, which was acquired by CentricVoice in 2006. And its CTO, Ferderer, was once the chief information officer for TelCove, a carrier that was acquired by Level 3 Communications in 2006.

Linesider has racked up a number of big-name partners in the cloud space, including EMC (a customer, whose own cloud computing offering is said to be launching soon), Cisco, 3Com (largely for the European market) and American Systems (another customer).

Linesider has disclosed a list of investors but won’t say how much funding it has raised so far.