AT&T today is enhancing its successful Web hosting incentive program, announced in June, to include its award-winning managed data storage service...

AT&T today is enhancing its successful Web hosting incentive program, announced in June, to include its award-winning managed data storage services, as businesses and government agencies struggle to meet federal and industry regulations for maintaining data.

The company also is extending the incentive program, which originally was set to expire last week, through Dec. 31, 2003.

"We originally introduced the Hosting Transition Program to help businesses and government agencies whose Web-hosting operations have been challenged by numerous service providers closing their operations over the last year," said Chuck Sanders, vice president of hosting and managed services. "Because of our success so far-we've signed more than 30 customers, we're now offering data storage services, through our global network of Internet Data Centers (IDCs), to this program."

Customers will be able to select from a comprehensive set of integrated networked storage services, ranging from simple off-site tape back-up and recovery to managed storage area network (SAN) services with remote data replication and load balancing between two sites.

According to an AT&T white paper on business continuity, one-third of companies say they expect to lose data or operational efficiency in the event of a disaster.

AT&T's data storage services can help companies comply with requirements for storage and availability of electronic mail transmissions mandated by the Securities and Exchange Commission, and requirements for the use and transfer of electronic patient records under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.

In May, AT&T received The Best SAN Solution award from the Total Solution Provider (TSP) Awards for Storage for the company's innovative, integrated managed hosting and Ultravailable(R) storage solution. AT&T Ultravailable(R) Storage Services provide virtually unlimited capacity for expanding storage needs, increased redundancy and a performance guarantee of 99.99 percent availability of data.

"The recent blackouts that affected major metropolitan cities proved again that businesses need to have a networking infrastructure that is highly available and recoverable, in the event of an actual service disruption," Sanders said. "Because of the investments we continue to make, our data centers and global network performed flawlessly and didn't miss a beat. Keeping a business' networking infrastructure on-line, even in the most difficult conditions, has become a mandatory requirement."

AT&T recently announced new managed security services and service enhancements that help businesses and government agencies assess vulnerabilities, protect against unauthorized access, detect attacks and respond to security vulnerabilities across their networks, systems and applications. For instance, AT&T Application Firewall Service prevents inappropriate transactions from penetrating an application by continuously examining transactions against dynamic policies.

Like other managed security services, AT&T Application Firewall Service is a fully managed capability that includes hardware/software provisioning, testing, installation, and around-the-clock management with reporting via the client portal.

AT&T's transition program makes it even easier for businesses to take advantage of these managed security services.

The program offers flexible financing options, complimentary installation, expedited contracting, service assurance guarantees and aggressive pricing. Since the Hosting Transition Program was announced in June, AT&T has signed up new customers, such as: EnvoyWorldWide(TM), a provider of interactive notification services; Towers Perrin, one of the world's largest management, human resources consulting and administration firms; and Vitamin Shoppe, the nation's leading discount retailer of vitamins and nutritional supplements.

The transition program, which offers incentives under two packages, is designed to ease the challenges of migrating Web hosting operations for both U.S.-based customers and international corporations with Web hosting needs in North America.

Standard Package
Under its "standard package" option, AT&T will waive one month of recurring charges and offer customers hardware trade-in/up programs and financing options. Customers also will receive complimentary:

* Project management support, such as on-site surveys and quality assurance;
* Engineering support, including equipment inventory; and
* Equipment transport up to 300 miles.

Customer-Specific Package
Under its "customer-specific package" option, AT&T will waive one month of recurring charges and offer enhanced complimentary transition services, including:

* Project management support and professional services to design and deploy the customer's hosted solution;
* Installation for Internet connectivity, various AT&T managed services, such as security, load balancing, virtual private network and storage;
* Engineering support, such as analysis of detailed migration plan; and
* Hardware trade-in/up and financing options.

About AT&T Web Hosting
AT&T continues to invest, expand and experience significant growth in its Web hosting business, which includes a broad range of customer-managed to AT&T-managed services and already generates hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue. The company's total hosting business is growing at several times the industry average. And AT&T managed hosting services grew by more than 100 percent last year.

AT&T has seen a 42 percent increase in the number of customers in its international data centers in the past year. The company recently opened new data centers in China (Hong Kong), France (Nice) and Australia (Sydney), bringing its total number of centers to 21 across three continents, including 13 centers in the United States.

Because the company's data centers reside on the AT&T global network, AT&T can tie businesses' existing data networks, such as frame relay, VPN, asynchronous transfer mode and private line, directly into AT&T data centers, securely linking customers' critical back-office operations, such as supply chain management and order fulfillment, to their Web-based applications.

AT&T has the ability to fully manage a business' hosting environment from the network layer through applications performance. AT&T's full suite of scalable Internet Protocol (IP) and managed hosting services includes business continuity, disaster recovery, content distribution, storage, managed security and firewall services and load balancing across multiple data center locations.

In addition, the AT&T Managed Services Portal provides managed hosting customers with personalized, secure access to detailed information about their AT&T-hosted infrastructure and applications. The Managed Services Portal is part of the unified AT&T BusinessDirect portal for business customers.

AT&T's Enterprise Hosting Services are supported by the AT&T integrated Global Enterprise Management System (iGEMS), which monitors and correlates data on customer networks round-the-clock. The value of iGEMS is its ability to provide end-to-end integration and management and monitoring from the transport to the application level. Using the iGEMS platform, customers can identify, contain and isolate events as well as see network activity affecting their infrastructure through the AT&T Managed Services Portal.