“There was never a ‘Eureka!’ moment for me, but I found that networks and communications technologies were some things I really liked,” Negahbani says. “You have to understand the customer’s business needs and the technology needs so you can have an immediate impact on people’s lives.” Since then, he has grown the New York company to where it has more than 100 clients as well as partnerships with Cisco Systems, Computer Associates, and others. Negahbani has always looked to overcome challenges to the deployment of network infrastructure, and these days, he says, the challenge is to provision resilient networks that act like a utility, offering customers an always-on service. Negahbani says Exenet attempts to take care of the complex network problems of monitoring, storage, and management so that customers can worry about their own business problems. “Many customers look at a project without considering it under an umbrella that would give it resilience,” Negahbani says. “We ask customers to take one step back and think of how the project would work as an overall concept of resiliency and how it affects them.” Negahbani says he uses his status as CEO and CTO to his company’s advantage. “CTOs and CEOs don’t always speak the same language, so [the double responsibility] can make my life a little easier and keep me maybe a step ahead,” he says. He has guided his managed network service provider through dangerous waters that have claimed many other providers by sensing and meeting his customers’ needs, industry analysts say. Exenet has evolved from a small systems network integration company to a hosted IT infrastructure provider, receiving more than $45 million in investment capital. The company now offers managed systems and networks to Fortune 2000 corporations, using a suite of integrated managed service offerings, including network/system monitoring and management, data availability services such as remote storage and business continuity, and managed enterprisewide directory technology. Colin Tyler, a partner at the Boston.-based research and consulting firm, The McKenna Group, says Negahbani has focused on offering services that enterprise CTOs don’t want to manage themselves. “Some CTOs are starting to ask, ‘What are the parts of my IT infrastructure that will never differentiate my business?’ ” Tyler says. “And for these, they want to outsource and take the issue off their plate. “Sam has embraced a view that says there are pieces of IT functionality that can be taken off the CTO’s plate,” Tyler adds. “Exenet has probably done a good job of refocusing around what things a utility is going to be able to sell in the new IT environment.” Fewer major hardware purchases by corporations are forcing CTOs to ask more from their network infrastructure, Negahbani says. “Two years ago, if a new type of technology came out, people would have to have it. “Now, [customers] need to have more ROI,” Negahbani says. “Now a lot of corporations are looking at network maintenance and monitoring instead of having to buy new software.” Software Development