BellSouth Corp. Tuesday launched
its so-called “e-Platform” initiative targeting application service providers.
As part of its “nEtwork Partner Program” to support its new business
centers based in Atlanta and Miami, BellSouth’s designed a network that
allows clients to dramatically respond to demands for bandwidth and ramp-up
their Web distribution capabilities.
Donna Lee, BellSouth Customer Markets president of marketing, said the
network partner program is an expansion of its strategic alliance scheme
developed in 1985.
“By blending BellSouth’s technologically advanced network and skilled
resources with that of our best-in-class partners, we are able to provide
the pinnacle in performance for mission-critical e-business services,” Lee
said.
Charter members of the program include IT consulting maven Cap Gemini Ernst & Young and Internet
service provider iXL. As select business
partners, the firms exchange sales leads and work with BellSouth to jointly
pursue marketing opportunities.
Rick Matthews, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young vice president said BellSouth’s
channel program enables the ASP enthusiast to broaden its market coverage,
increase revenues and enhance market credibility.
“The strength of BellSouth’s network and its e-Platform initiative provides
a powerful complement to Cap Gemini Ernst & Young’s services that will
allow us both to respond to our customers’ demands,” Matthews said.
Bert Ellis, iXL chief executive officer said BellSouth’s initiative is all
about the future of networking that allows the full-service ISP to deliver
results today.
Over the next 6 months, BellSouth intends to aggressively court systems
integrators, ASPs, ISPs, and other dot-com start-ups to join its
distribution partnership program.
BellSouth’s e-Platform provide provides a variety of e-business services,
including dedicated and custom hosting solutions, managed storage and
security, content distribution, caching, disaster recovery and back office
support for its ASP portfolio.
In order to construct the fiber-based network at the heart of BellSouth’s
e-Platform program, the telecom firm teamed up with Qwest Communications International and Sun Microsystems.
As a part of the alliance, Qwest reserved up to 25,000 square feet of floor
space in both BellSouth facilities.
Sun struck a multi-year deal worth $450 million with BellSouth to provide
the UNIX-based hardware, software and professional services powering the
two new data centers. For its part, BellSouth becomes a Sun recommended Web
hosting and network service in the Southeast.
Ed Zander, Sun president and chief operating officer, said years ago the
firm started telling the world that “The Network is the Computer,” and a
lot of people thought Sun was crazy. But, he added, BellSouth understood
what Sun was talking about.
“BellSouth has been providing network-based services, in the form of dial
tone, for years. Now the market has matured to the point where businesses
are ready for applications and services to be delivered by a service
provider rather than managed and maintained in-house,” Zander said.
“We believe BellSouth is in a great position to become one of the leading
service providers by leveraging its network expertise and its partners’
capabilities,” Zander added.
Like Sun’s Zander, BellSouth contends it will be a major player in the
exploding business-to-business and business-to-consumer markets, which
analysts estimate to be worth $2.7 in the U.S. by 2004. Its e-Platform
initiative is designed to lock-up the Southeast market segment valued at
more than $4-6 billion over the same period.
BellSouth had to bury about
3 million miles of fiber optic cable in the
ground to connect 1,650 central offices with 50 BellSouth managed
facilities through some 15,000 SONET rings to get its network up and running.
Doing business in the Southeast means that the telecom firm has to be ready
for anything e-businesses and “Mother Nature” throws at it. BellSouth’s
e-Platform data facilities were placed in “bunker-like” buildings said to
be “hurricanes-proof.”
Dick Anderson, BellSouth president of customer markets said its customers
are excited about capitalizing on today’s Internet-enabled economy and that
BellSouth can minimize the risks of doing business on the Web.
“With BellSouth’s e-Platform for business, clients can rest easy at night,
knowing their data and business applications are protected by the same
reliable infrastructure that provides them with dial tone every morning,”
Anderson said.
