Few people have much experience setting up a data center, which means that the first time they do it, the process is often tortuous and fraught with error.

There are so many moving parts. Space needs to be purchased or leased, equipment provisioned, and networking and peering services set up. Each company’s needs are unique, which means the process usually involves a lot of phone calls, face-to-face meetings and contract negotiations.

Charles Stewart (pictured) knows that pain. In a 20-year career that has included a lot of work managing data center setup and operations, he has seen how easy it is for information technology managers to make costly mistakes, and how vendors take advantage of their lack of experience. “We’ve seen the same pain points over and over again,” he said. “Everyone has the same problem.”

With Inflect Inc., Stewart and co-founder Mike Nguyen are trying to simplify the process of moving from the cloud to a hybrid on-site or co-located data center using a free web-based service that enables organizations to compare infrastructure providers and choose the best combination of services for their needs. “It’s an open, neutral search and procurement tool that connects buyers and sellers of infrastructure,” Stewart said. “We’re not tied to any service provider and anybody can use it.”

Dare to compare

The concept is familiar to anyone who has ever used a comparison shopping engine for choosing, say, a health plan or an espresso maker. You select your options, specify criteria and get what you hope is an apples-to-apples comparison. Inflect’s approach is similar, but with a lot more complexity under the covers.

Users start with existing provider relationships and specify requirements such as location, network provider, peering service and cloud compatibility. Inflect shows only providers that meet those criteria. Users can zoom in and few the options on a map or in a tabular display. Eventually, they’ll be able to buy as well, with Inflect taking a fee.

There’s nothing new about the side-by-side comparison metaphor, but building such a service for a product set with the scope and complexity of data center infrastructure isn’t simple. One big reason: Service providers have little incentive to give up data unless there’s a contract involved. Almost none make such information available via an application program interface.

So Inflect is most tackling this problem the old-fashioned way: with the telephone. The co-founders, along with Marketing Director Alex Seber, all spent several years at Silent Partner Inc., an infrastructure advisory firm. They’re using the contacts forged during those years to try to cajole information from telecom providers.

One advantage they have is that “due to interconnection, everybody is basically a client of everybody else,” Stewart said. That makes validation a little easier. Information is also checked through with data sets from other providers as well as with public resources like PeeringDB. Inflect hopes the success of its service will convince more infrastructure providers to open up information via APIs, but for now, the process is largely manual.

The company so far has primary source data from about 30 providers representing 2,200 data centers. The service is currently free, with availability wait-listed.

For now, Inflect is focused on companies that want to use Amazon Web Services Inc.’s Direct Connect dedicated network connection feature, but it expects to add support for other platforms. With $2 million in seed money, it’s working toward a third-quarter launch and hopes to raise more funds at that time.

Photo: Charles Stewart