Vyatta, which emerged from stealth mode with the beta launch of its Open Flexible Router last February, has now committed to a hardware strategy, mostly as a bid to appeal to enterprise networking and IT administrators, said Dave Roberts, Vyatta VP of strategy and marketing.

The San Mateo, California-based company plans to sell off-the-shelf hardware, pre-configured with OFR, in the mid-range market. To address [Cisco-owned] Linksys’ SoHo market, you need to be very cost conscious we’re not at that point yet, Roberts said.

And to move up the stack to large ISP routers and the like would require specifically engineered hardware, which Vyatta is not yet ready to do, he added.

Users will have a few options to try OFT out: download the free code and run it on any hardware, with or without paid service support; or buy pre-loaded hardware from the company, which comes with a service agreement. Beyond that, the company hopes to bring some hardware partners on board, ones that are playing in the Cisco marketplace, Roberts said.

But Vyatta does not intend to be a sub-component. We want it to be Vyatta branded, he said. Potentially, it would be a Red Hat-IBM type of agreement, whereby IBM resells Red Hat-branded wares.

Since the OFR beta launched, thousands of users have downloaded it, Roberts said. He declined to be more specific, except to say that in the first few hours of its release, back in February, it had been downloaded about 300 times.

About half of its beta users are US-based, but there has also been much interest in France, as well as users in Russia, China and Japan, Roberts said.

So far, new network analysis, debugging and testability features have been added to the code as a result of feedback from testers, he said.

Vyatta hopes to commercially launch OFR as early as July. Shortly thereafter it hopes to announce a Fortune 100 customer. We’re talking to more than one, Roberts said. E*Trade Financial Corp is among them, he confirmed.

Within a year of commercialization, Vyatta could turn a profit, Roberts said. Looking ahead, Vyatta aims to be bigger than niche in the enterprise routing market, but does not expect to put market leader Cisco Systems Inc out of business, Roberts said. Vyatta claims to be the first open-source vendor of routers, Roberts said.

There are others, including Linux router and networking gear maker ImageStream Internet Solutions Inc. But Roberts said Plymouth, Indiana-based ImageStream uses a proprietary routing stack, unlike Vyatta. This means there is no access to the source code of the stack, so you can’t change it, etc, Roberts said, and it makes it more difficult to build a real open-source community around the products.

IP Infusion Inc also makes an open-source routing platform. The San Jose, California-based company was acquired by Japan’s Access Co Ltd earlier this year and

Roberts reckoned the company has all but gone away. But IP Infusion recently appointed a new VP of service and support, with the stated intention of growing its enterprise and MetroEthernet markets through greater customer support.

User support also is one of Vyatta’s stated competitive distinctions. Nobody has put together a whole package and stood behind it and supported it, Roberts said. And it’s all open source.

Roberts said the ease of use of Vyatta’s product, a CD-ROM turns a PC into a router, will be another advantage.

Commoditization and unnecessary obsolescence in networking is paving the way for Vyatta’s open-source router, Roberts reckoned.

While offering pre-loaded hardware can only help the company get a foothold in the enterprise market, just how quickly a fully open-sourced router will gain acceptance remains to be seen.

The company’s undisclosed first round of venture capital funding, which it garnered last April when it incorporated, will see it through to next year, when Roberts said Vyatta will seek another round for growth.

Vyatta, which currently has about 15 workers, also plans to hire another 10 or so engineers during the next six months, he said.