Westborough, Mass. -- For two years, Mangosoft Corp. operated in a stealth-like
mode, as 45 software engineers quietly worked on a new technology the company said will
make networking a small business almost as easy as turning on the coffeemaker.
The Westborough-based company describes its CacheLink technology as a network
architecture that creates a virtual server out of a client and is different than the
traditional client/server and peer-to-peer networks.
"This flips the model upside-down a bit," said Richard Onyon, vice president
of sales and marketing at Mangosoft.
Onyon said Mangosoft's flagship product, Medley, which debuted at PC Expo last week,
was created for the small-business and SOHO markets. In addition, the company this week kicks
off a 10-city road show to attract VARs and resellers into its Partner Program, which offers
certification, sales training and support, and marketing programs.
"Mangosoft is breaking all the rules when it comes to networking," said Steven Frank,
the company's president, chief executive and founder.
"We have engineered a powerfully simple network environment that is adaptive, automated and
transparent [and] that can be set up by anyone in minutes," said Frank, who formerly held the
position of chief technical officer at Kendall Square Research, a company known for its work in
parallel processing with supercomputers.
Onyon said in no way is the company "suggesting that [Mangosoft is]
delivering a supercomputer".
He said Medley is targeted at small businesses with less than 25 seats, and it is scalable to
10,000 seats. He said the company is working on products that will be aimed at
the enterprise level.
Onyon said the company's CacheLink network architecture allows every connected PC to act
as client and a server. Although the systems do not share processing power, they do share storage
resources in which the memory is aggregated, thereby giving a performance
boost, the company said.
"In our model, each machine is a client and server," Onyon said. "We use the TCP/IP core, and
for a growing business all you need are peers, wiring and a hub. In our environment, the
computer is the network."
Onyon said the Mangosoft software is "self-configuring," adding it allows the system to be
fault-tolerant and self-healing. One requirement for a small business to use Medley is it must
be using at least Microsoft Corp.'s Windows 95, and a higher-end 486 or
Pentium-based CPU, he said.
Colleen Terry, Mangosoft director of channel management, described the company's
go-to-market attempt a "circular channel strategy" that includes OEMs and
VARs.
In addition, the company is in talks with hardware manufacturers to bundle the software
with a hub to, in essence, sell a small-business server.
Onyon said the company will sell "100 percent through the channel," adding that VARs
signing on will get referral leads from the customers who purchase a two-seat
pack at retail.
"We are making the network layer easy and cheap," he said.
Copyright (c) 1997 CMP Media Inc.
