New Professional Services Firm Optaros Receives Funding to Help Large Enterprises Realize the Benefits of Open Source Software

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Firm´s Goal: Rapidly Build High-Quality, Cost-Effective Business Applications Based on Open Source Components and Platforms

Cambridge, Mass. — Dec. 14, 2004 — Optaros Inc., a new consulting and systems integration firm, announced today that it received venture capital funding toward its mission of helping large enterprises use open source software to reduce the cost of commercial software and rapidly build high-quality, cost-effective and more flexible business applications.

Optaros received funding from Charles River Ventures, a Waltham, Mass., venture capital firm, and Bob Gett, Optaros´ founder and CEO. Since July, Gett and a core team have defined the firm´s business model, service offerings and business development strategies. The team played key roles in building leading consulting firms involved in the last two major technology shifts: client-server technology (Cambridge Technology Partners) and the Internet/World Wide Web (Viant and Scient). Gett was president of CTP´s North American unit from 1990 to 1996 and was CEO of Viant from 1996 to 2002.

Izhar Armony, general partner at Charles River Ventures, said, "We have already successfully invested in open source-related companies and believe that there will be significant value in professional services. The proven track record of the Optaros team in helping large enterprises adopt new technologies and simultaneously building successful services companies is what really set them apart in our mind."

Over the last several years, open source software has gained ground as an alternative to proprietary software, which has become a major and growing line item in IT budgets. CIOs are increasingly concerned about price increases, unnecessary features, forced upgrades, escalating support costs, abandoned products or releases, and cancellation of support of proprietary software products. In response, an increasing number of businesses, government institutions, and other organizations have had success installing open source-based operating systems (e.g., Linux), application servers (e.g., JBoss), and Web server software (e.g., Apache). More recently, a number of business applications software products have been developed by the open source community.

Over the summer and fall, Optaros conducted extensive interviews with more than 20 large organizations to understand their open source strategies and requirements. The research generated three major findings: today´s open source adopters have generated substantial business benefits in terms of cost savings, higher quality and more secure systems; there is a substantial need for open source-based business applications software; there is an absence of service companies that can help large enterprises plan, develop, and support open source-based business applications (such as content management, work flow, collaboration, and custom systems).

Said Gett, "I have been a CIO and have built and run firms that provided services to CIOs. They have consistently faced three challenges: rapidly deploying applications for business users, reducing the cost of IT, and managing risk. CIOs are recognizing that open source software and its model of open standards, collaborative development, and user choices can help address these challenges."

Optaros was founded to help large enterprises identify and evaluate the increasing number of software components being developed in open source communities and then assemble them into business applications. To become the trusted adviser on open source software to large enterprises, Optaros offers services in the following areas:

• Consulting services to determine the business strategy and business case for migrating to open source solutions
• Research services to evaluate open source components and their viability for enterprise deployment
• Migration services to determine when and how to shift business applications software and application components to open source alternatives
• Systems development and integration services to build and implement open source-based applications
• Customized application maintenance and support services

The Optaros founders believe that their mission and services are unique: that there is no firm singularly focused on helping enterprises leverage open source software to build business applications.