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Mass High Tech January 29, 2004
U.K. software
outfit makes Woburn its home in U.S. Woburn, Mass., was founded by a group of Charlestown expatriates in 1640, forming first a town, then a city that later paid for the burial of its local reverend in the form of 14 gallons of wine. It’s here that resident Simeon Reed sold his wife for a yoke of oxen valued at $30 in 1789 and where, in 1810, the nation first saw a live elephant. In 1879 the women of Woburn voted to be taxed for the purposes of voting rights; in 1959 dial-up telephones were introduced; and in the 1980s there was a chapter about cancer-causing drinking water linked to W.R. Grace and immortalized by the film “A Civil Action.” The city followed up in 2001 by outlawing Silly String. Mark 2004 on Woburn’s timeline as when British software company AppSense launched its first U.S. headquarters and all of its North American business growth from the historic city. The company’s spokespeople describe AppSense’s “push” as an effort “to make Woburn the hive of activity.” When AppSense says activity, it means enhancing the performance of server-based computing environments, in particular Microsoft Terminal Services, Citrix and web services applications. “It’s a bit of a no-brainer to come here,” says AppSense marketing manager Matthew Rushton. “We’ve got MIT and Harvard and can get quality people. And it’s a great basis for expansion in the future. All of the infrastructure is here.” AppSense already had four performance-enhancing software products in house and on the market: Performance Manager, Application Manager, Optimizer and Server Based Toolkit. With the move to Woburn, it has bundled the four, branded it AppSense Performance Suite and added a piece of software making installation a one-shot deal, with Microsoft standards and interface. The company will be selling through channel partners, which typically sell to IT people. It’s marketed as offering the ability to monitor “all aspects of the system that could cause degradation in performance,” including CPU usage, memory allocation and elimination of rogue applications. “Our product is very technical,” Rushton says. But when non-technical managers hear that they don’t have to buy new servers when they add more employees, they become interested, he says. Instead of buying a new $10,000 server, the $3,295 AppSense suite looks pretty good. The company’s patented “thread throttling” technology promises to “clamp” excessive application tasks by forcibly restricting the CPU and memory occupied by the task. And statistics showing that 99 percent of Fortune 500 companies are using server-based computing promise there’s a market. Senior associate analyst Jon Collins of Great Britain’s Quocorca Ltd. published a glowing endorsement of the new AppSense suite. “By optimizing how business applications are executed, taking control of CPU usage and maximizing server availability, AppSense’s Performance Suite ensures that organizations can experience the increased efficiency, reliability and cost effectiveness that server-based computing should provide,” he said. AppSense is selling the suite internationally and from Woburn is announcing a strategic partnership with Alternative Technology as its major North American distributor. “It’s a very significant move,” Rushton says. “It signifies our expansion in the States. They are a certified Citrix partner and we have a strong endorsement from Microsoft.” Strong indeed. In particular, a passage in the book, “Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Terminal Services” by Bernhard Tritsch reads: “I have worked on many Microsoft Windows Terminal Server projects where the AppSense Performance Suite has been included as an important system extension. If you are planning to implement a server-based solution on Microsoft Windows Server 2003, I would strongly recommend this product. The AppSense Performance Suite will increase not only performance but also security and reliability of your system.” AppSense CEO Tony Bolland says his product will be marketed as a means to reduce IT costs, enhance security and improve the level of service, during his sales cycles, which vary from project to project. An average of 1,000 customers a month are downloading the company’s free 21-day trials for evaluation. AppSense was founded in 1999, is privately funded and plans to seek a round of venture funding this summer. The company competes with RTO Software in Georgia and Aurema in California and has customers from varied markets. “We’re
strong in banking and finance, but across all verticals,” Rushton
says. “It makes it easier.
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