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WorldCom Inc. on Wednesday continued to add to its menu of value-added services for its hosting customers with three new service options.
The three service options added to WorldComs growing menu of value-added offerings–the new WorldCom Data Storage Services, WorldCom Global Server Load Balancing Services, and WorldCom IP VPN Remote Services with Colocation–are a response to customers growing interest in business continuity planning for “webified” applications as well as a response to the growing security threat posed by hackers.
With the new storage services, WorldCom can quickly put together a solution that is more scalable and less costly to build than enterprises can create for themselves, according to Rebecca Carr, director of global hosting services for WorldCom in Atlanta.
The new data storage services include tape backup and restore, storage area network and network-attached storage services. As a part of the storage services, WorldCom creates a dedicated server array for an individual customer and provides monitoring and maintenance of the storage software. It monitors to ensure that backups are taking place and that a system is following the business rules established by the customer. Customers manage their applications remotely.
Thus far WorldCom is offering the storage services in five data centers, in Boston; Carteret, N.J., Chicago; San Jose, Calif.; and Ashburn, Va. That will grow to encompass all 14 of WorldComs U.S. data centers; the company is building out its data centers for storage services in Europe/Middle East/Africa and Asia/Pacific late in the fourth quarter of this year and early next year.
The Clinton, Miss., service provider also extended its local load balancing services to provide global server load balancing across different geographies. Available in all 14 data centers now, the service is offered in both a shared and a dedicated model. “Enterprises are looking at collocating and outsouricng the data center to support webified internal applications, and they want to maintain the integrity and performance of those applications,” said Carr.
The IP VPN service provides remote and mobile end users with secure connectivity to their applications.
The IP VPN services, based on Nortel Contivity switches, is available in all 14 U.S. data centers. It is priced either on a flat fee or usage basis. Customers can view traffic across their VPNs using WorldComs Virtual Console, a Web-based portal.
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