When a company needs to grow its infrastructure footprint, for example when expanding into a new market, one of the first steps is to check what data center services are available in the region and how they can help advance the project. The issue is that obtaining up-to-date provider information tends to be rather difficult.

San Francisco-based Inflect Inc. today announced that it has secured $3 million in funding to try to change that. The capital comes courtesy of a half-dozen angel investors, including Kyle Vogt, the head of General Motors Co.’s Cruise Automation self-driving car division.

Inflect operates a portal that aims to do for data center services what aggregator websites such as Kayak.com achieved in the travel industry. The startup provides a visual interface for exploring colocation facilities where a company can host its hardware and assess network connectivity options and other relevant offerings. Altogether, Inflect covers some 4,000 data centers that it says represent more than 80 percent of the market.

Users can narrow down the information with a set of filters built into the interface. Inflect makes it possible to browse for specific offerings as well as quickly find providers that possess a needed compliance certification. The latter feature can come particularly handy for companies in areas such as the financial sector, where data may only be stored on infrastructure that meets certain legally mandated standards.

Inflect’s service has the potential to simplify data center initiatives a great deal. Instead of individually reaching out to providers about their offerings, a company’s technical personnel can find the information on their own and move onto the next step faster. The resulting time savings in turn speed up the entire project.

Inflect generates revenue by charging providers when they land a deal with a customer who did their research on its platform. Charles Stewart, the startup’s chief operating officer, stated in a TechCrunch interview earlier this year that the plan is eventually to let enterprises buy services directly via the portal.

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