Open Source works for NSP

A small Auckland company is proof that you don't have to stick to the mainstream of Microsoft-based software to run a viable IT services business.

Network Service Providers (NSP) is a three-year-old firm claiming success with Open Source software that it says does what equivalent Microsoft products do, but without the licensing fees.

It's a bold direction to take for the firm of 11 staff and $2 million revenue when Microsoft dominates the software world.

The extent to which the US software giant has captured the hearts and minds of New Zealand software developers can be seen in the popularity of its annual technical conference, Tech-Ed.

Microsoft expects this year's event, to be held in Auckland in August, to pull a crowd of 2000 developers and users of its products.

But Brent Larsen, co-owner of NSP, won't be there. It's not, he says, because he's anti-Microsoft. Although Open Source software and services are the company's staple, it does work with Microsoft products.

"We're platform-agnostic. What we're motivated by is providing a solution to a customer at great value."

Staying away from Tech-Ed has more to do with the company being relatively young and only just ready to start promoting its flagship product.

He acknowledges the company's leanings are towards the Open Source community, to which its developers "contribute quite a bit".

NSP has taken Xen, software developed at Cambridge University for allowing a single PC to be turned into up to 100 virtual computers and, as Open Source licensing allows, is selling it with features it has added.

Xen runs on Linux, and customers are buying it to run their email systems and for file management.

NSP's selling point is software it has written that allows a second PC connected to a Xen server to act as a mirror of the main machine; if the primary email server fails, the backup machine will take over within 30 seconds to a minute.

The system is providing renewed peace of mind at West Auckland company VirCom EMS, which relies on email to transact $60,000 of business a day.

Chief executive Craig Shepherd says the company, which carries out nationwide testing and certification of electricity meters, lost a day's worth of email six months ago in a data storage failure.

"When you're dealing with thousands upon thousands of emails a day, it was a bit of an issue," he said.

At a cost of about $10,000, VirCom has been running Xen for the past three months.

"Now, as each email comes in, it almost instantaneously creates a duplicate copy on the Xen server."