MCI launches managed content services

Despite further controversy over a federal investigation into MCI’s access charges, the bankrupt carrier today launched a new managed content delivery service, designed to help its enterprise customers handle the bulk distribution of high-bandwidth content to hundreds of sites simultaneously.

As part of its global managed services portfolio, MCI’s Enterprise Content Delivery Service (ECDS) uses a series of edge services located at every site to cache and manage various types of content from distance learning applications to streaming video. The ECDS spreads high-bandwidth applications to the edge of private networks, controlled from a “master server” managed by MCI, thus preventing bottlenecks in the core of the network and offsetting the need for customers to purchase higher capacity links to deliver megabyte-hungry content, said Jim DeMerlis, vice president of product management at MCI.

“The size of the files being sent across the average corporate network is growing exponentially,” DeMerlis said. “What used to be simple [Microsoft] Word files are becoming massive documents. It’s that growth in content that drive us to develop this service.

MCI will market the service primarily at medium to large enterprises, with remote sites numbering between 500 and 2000. While there is no lower or upper end to the number of sites the service can support, the $7500 a month for the master server and the $525 a month for edge servers becomes cost prohibited below a few hundred sites. Adding in installation costs, a 500-server ECDN will come to about $540 per site per month over three years. MCI launched the service today domestically, but eventually plans to expand it globally. DeMerlis said MCI expects the service to grow to a $1 billion business by 2006.