Flexiant flexes muscle in face of web hosting crowd

Exclusive A SaaS company with its eye firmly fixed on the web hosting market and backed by investors including the co-founders of Nominet UK and Pipex Communications will launch later today.

London-based Flexiant, which was incorporated in November last year, raised around £1m in an "over-subscribed" funding round.

It has splashed the cash on Flexiscale, whose cloud computing tech it acquired from XCalibre Communications Ltd - which additionally said it would provide Flexiant with R&D working capital.

As part of the deal, financial terms of which were kept secret, Flexiant will continue to market the two-year-old Amazon-like Flexiscale public cloud service. The outfit said it expected to announce "a major software release" in the next few months, though it didn't provide any further details.

Investors backing Flexiant include Nominet UK co-founder Alex Bligh, who takes on the role of CEO at the firm, and Pipex Communications founder Laurence Blackall, who has been appointed chairman.

Tony Lucas, who founded XCalibre and built the Flexiscale platform, is also on board the management team.

"He has pioneered cloud computing for the past five years and I believe that we have pulled together the right team to change forever the technology used for internet hosting,” said Bligh.

The company hopes to convince customers to use its service, which it claimed reduces both operating costs and carbon footprint.

"The success of Flexiscale to date means that we are in a strong position to lead the way as the sector evolves and I am looking forward to the challenges ahead,” said Lucas.

On 10 December Webfusion acquired the hosting assets of XCalibre for an undisclosed sum. Five days later Lucas was handed a director name badge at Flexiant, according to Companies House records.

Webfusion said in a statement last month that it hoped to eventually offer FlexiScale to its customers. ®