US-based start up, Opengear has established an Australian office to develop and sell a range of Open Source infrastructure management solutions.

The brainchild of Queensland serial entrepreneur, Bob Waldie, Opengear is funded by a mix of US venture capital and Australian investment partners.

The new start up is initially targeting the niche console server management market.

"After researching the market, it became clear that vendors in the IT infrastructure management sector have not passed on the savings they have achieved as a result of moving to open source technologies.  While our products are comparable to other market offerings in terms of functionality and quality, they cost between 50 to 70 per cent less than the leading brand and our entry level eight port console server product costs under A$700," Waldie said.

Opengear has launched with a line of five console server management products and is also developing a range of open source KVM (keyboard, video, mouse) over IP products which will be released in the second half of this year.  KVM over IP technology allows companies to use the resources of one or more remote PCs over a broadband Internet connection to access files, operate equipment or update software and utilities.