Hyperic aims to be JBoss of management software

Startup Hyperic said that it has landed over $3 million in initial funding and that it will recast its business model around open source next month.

The company's roots are at Covalent, where Hyperic co-founder and president Javier Soltero led development of a management software "framework" which monitors performance of a wide range of computing resources, from routers to application servers.

Covalent and its investors, which had put $10 to $12 million in the development of the management software, decided to focus on Apache Web server management. Soltero then started Hyperic.

Now on board as an advisor is Bob Bickel, the former head of business development at JBoss. Open-source veteran Larry Augustin is also on the board of directors following Accel Partners' investment in Hyperic.

Bickel said that there are a lot of similarities between the middleware market and the management area. One being that corporate customers spend a lot of money on both product categories, $6 billion a year, he said.

"If you look at the management space, there are a lot of similarities to the middleware space a few years ago," he said.

Hyperic's strategy is to offer a very functional but low-cost alternative to high-end management frameworks from CA, IBM Tivoli, BMC or HP OpenView.

For his part, Soltero said that the company was making a good living before the investment and ramp-up plans. He, too, sees room for lots of growth, saying he's ready to play "major league baseball."