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Building on its acquisition of Digex Corp. a year and a half ago, MCI is upgrading more than a dozen of its data centers around the country to offer organizations a new level of managed services and security.
Until now, MCI Inc.s data centers provided either standard or premium services. This week, 17 of the standard centers were upgraded to advanced data centers, giving organizations more flexibility to purchase outsourced services a la carte and giving them direct access to MCIs IP network.
Users can co-locate a variety of equipment, including Web servers, frame switches and ISP modem banks.
At the advanced data centers, customers have limited access to equipment, on-site technical support and a range of IP bandwidth options, including tiered and burstable speeds up to 100 Mbps, in addition to the standard set of services.
The premium data centers remain the best option for customers who are concerned about redundancy and want the highest level of physical security.
Following the acquisition of Digex, data-center offerings were not consistent throughout MCIs footprint, said Tim Burke, senior product manager of MCIs hosting group.
Over the next six weeks, MCI will unveil a series of additional enhancements with the aim of providing an increasingly unified hosting portfolio.
The announcements will feature additional offerings and capabilities, including new technology to provide better back-up services, said Tom Walton, vice president of product management for hosting and security at the Ashburn, Va., company. The goal is to deliver higher levels of services on a larger footprint, he said.
Advanced data centers will be located in Phoenix; San Diego; San Francisco; Chicago; Cleveland; Detroit; Las Vegas; New York; Philadelphia; Salt Lake City; St. Louis; Washington; Jacksonville, Fla.; Tampa, Fla.; Sacramento, Calif.; and Raleigh, N.C.