Sprint Comes Down With Weatherbug

Sprint’s E|Solutions continues to pick up customers in
today’s failing collocation industry with its announced deal Wednesday
afternoon to host AWS Convergence, Inc.

The deal is a win for both companies: Sprint E|Solutions needs to fill up
its facilities with paying customers in an increasingly
competitive field
of Web hosts, while AWS continues uninterrupted
service for seven million registered users of its real-time Weatherbug
application.

Chris Sloop, AWS chief technology officer, said his company was looking for
a Web host that could provide true Tier 1 support for the bandwidth demands
of an application that’s been downloaded and installed by more than 80
million users to date.

“We were looking for a company that could offer us the reliability,
stability and scalability we need as WeatherBug and our other weather
information services geared toward broadcast news outlets, schools and
consumers continue to grow rapidly,” he said. “The combination of Sprint’s
knowledge, its Tier-1 IP backbone, and the company’s flexibility in finding
solutions to meet our needs now, and in the future were some of the most
important factors in the decision to move our hosting business to Sprint.”

Information wasn’t available at press time over the extent of the migration
from its unknown former collocation provider. The move was affected near
AWS’ headquarters in Gaithersburg, MD, at Sprint’s Reston, VA, facility.

According to AWS, the company has more than 5,000 weather stations
connected to its network, delivering real-time weather information to its
customers by zip code. The Weatherbug download is a free program that
Jupiter Media Metrix reports has been extremely popular over the past year
with a 600 percent increase in visits throughout 2001, putting AWS on its
Top 50 Web sites list.

Keith Paglusch, Sprint E|Solutions president, said the addition of AWS to
the company portfolio is important as they seek to sign deals with major
companies. The Web hosting division already sports contracts with Internet
heavyweights Yahoo! and eBay.

“We’re pleased AWS has placed its trust in Sprint to deliver its Web
hosting and connectivity services,” he said. “The service needs reliable
and secure connectivity to continue to grow, and our Internet Centers were
built with these kinds of business needs in mind.

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