Inflow: to serve and protect e-commerce.

• Author: Kerven, Anne
• Position: Data center specialist - Company Profile

Few startups see the planning that went into the creation of Denver-based Inflow. Founders Art Zeile and Joel Daly came up with about 20 to 25 startup ideas and wrote 10- to 12-page business plans for each.

That was 1997. They settled on Inflow, "the most compelling" choice and one involving a niche they knew, CEO Zeile said. They launched it with $1.2 million of their own funds, and by last spring, the company was established enough to draw $10 million in venture capital for a five-city expansion.

Inflow rents data center space to e-companies who install their servers and pertinent hardware in specially designed cabinets. A raised metal floor allows cables to run from the cabinets to Inflow's network server, where customers get access to Inflow's network and its built-in redundancies. The network uses multiple telecom carriers, for example, meaning that if AT&T goes down, the network automatically switches customers to another provider, leaving their operations uninterrupted.

Inflow targets small, well-funded startup software companies such as e-merchants and online researchers, Zeile said, usually those using proprietary software to operate online. For those companies, establishing and managing a network costs time, space and dollars - some $296,000 the first year. Outsourcing those functions can run $168,000 a year, Inflow estimates.

In its network operations center, network engineers monitor operations all day, every day, via five large computer screens set into the wall.

"At any one given time. (they're) managing hundreds of circuits," Zeile said. "Any one could fail," at which point Inflow...