BellSouth Takes Net Services to Enterprise

BellSouth is rolling out a new slate of storage and voice recognition services for enterprise customers that it says will allow it to grab its share of bits and bytes in a world where data is king.

BellSouth is rolling out a new slate of storage and voice recognition services for enterprise customers that it says will allow it to grab its share of bits and bytes in a world where data is king.

"Eighteen months ago, no one was interested in [the regional Bells] take on the Internet. We were Old Economy. All we had were customers, revenue and a strong balance sheet," Donna Lee, BellSouths chief marketing officer, said last week, when the telephone company announced Gigabit Ethernet (Gig-E) service for its metro business customers.

It turns out that BellSouths network is squarely in the middle of todays New Economy, which has rediscovered demand, earnings, discipline and service.

With data traffic growing 200 percent per year and storage techniques becoming too complex for the generalists that comprise most IT staffs, some analysts are saying the timing could not be better for BellSouth to enter the storage market. The regional Bell is partnering with StorageNetworks to deliver managed storage options to consumers and businesses. Enterprises that connect to BellSouths new Gig-E services in the metro area can connect to the regional Bells Storage-Enabled Network.

BellSouth will also work with BeVocal to offer products to the consumer, small-business and large-enterprise markets that deliver e-mail, the Internet and other services with voice-command capabilities.