Cable & Wireless PLC
Wednesday opened
the first of 20 its worldwide Web hosting centers.
The first of the new 33,000 square feet Cable & Wireless (CWP)
centers in Reston, Va., can accommodate 5,000 servers
and can provide bandwidth capacity of 9.6G/bps or OC192 speeds. The big
pipe means that the Cable & Wireless Reston center is capable of receiving
700 million Web visits each day.
Graham Wallace, Cable and Wireless group chief executive said completing
the companies first data center was a key step in delivering on their
global data and IP strategy.
“As companies around the world do more and more of their business over the
Internet, they need our resources and expertise globally to support their
e-commerce activities.” Wallace said.
According to Forrester Research,
Inc. (FORR)
the global Web hosting market is predicted to grow from a $3 billion
arket in 1999 to $23 billion by 2002. Wallace said Cable & Wireless’ data
center buildout is well times to meet the growing bandwidth needs of
e-commerce Web sites.
“With these worldwide Web hosting centers linked to our global IP network,
Cable & Wireless will be able to provide customers with faster and better
websites, more advanced e-commerce, applications and guaranteed performance
level,” Wallace said.
The next six Cable & Wireless web-hosting center openings are scheduled for
Santa Clara, Calif., London, Frankfurt, Munich, Tokyo and Sydney. Cable &
Wireless already provides telecommunication services from existing
facilities in Hong Kong, Australia, Japan and the UK.
Once all of the new centers are complete Cable & Wireless will be capable
of providing 1 million square feet of Web hosting space worldwide.