MARKETING MAKEOVER

Sometimes it's hard to estimate what drives a company to alter or augment its focus. Customer pressure, competitors' offerings and Wall Street are the common causes, but finding substance behind those "changes" actually can be far more daunting.

For MCI WorldCom, which is trying to re-brand itself as an "e-business and e-commerce enabler," the drivers most likely are the pressures and interest from customers, competitors' actions and a faltering stock price, although the company certainly would not admit to the latter two. The company also seeks to drop the "MCI" name in hopes of improving its public perception, making it a leaner, more hip and less cumbersome merged "WorldCom."

So with great pomp and circumstance, WorldCom has deemed itself a provider of "Generation d" (or "digital") services.

"This represents a fundamental shift in the company in which we make investments, train people and deploy technologies," said Bernard Ebbers, president and CEO of MCI WorldCom. The company is not satisfied with simply providing its standard fare such as ATM, frame relay and private line services, Ebbers said. It wants to "develop and deliver the building blocks for the digital economy," he said.

Ebbers said being deemed a telco was an insult, and the company strives to break free of the perceived incumbent and stodgy image despite the fact that telco-type service formed its foundation.

To substantiate its evolution into an "e-business" enabler, the company unveiled plans to provide services such as network and access services, Web hosting and Web site creation services for its business customers.

The company plans to leverage its existing network to offer those services, said Fred Briggs, chief technology officer for MCI WorldCom.

"Businesses are looking for services to bring portals to life," Briggs said. "Things such as e-mail, content management, voice over IP... we will provide all of those or a combination of them."

But it is difficult to spot change within the company's infrastructure to enable Generation d. The company plans to continue infrastructure buildout, with 15 new data centers expected to be completed by the end of the year. Within the next month, the company also plans to select softswitches for voice and data integration. In addition, the company will deploy multiservice switching platforms in the next year.

That decision will not set WorldCom apart from many other providers, said Carl Garland, principal analyst of network services for Current Analysis.

"What new services are there now as a result of this?" he asked. "There were none - and they waffled on when services would be available."

WorldCom also plans to scale back on call centers and place greater emphasis on Web centers, which is likely because of the additional call centers that will come from the Sprint merger.

"MCI will throttle back on consumer long-distance," Garland said.

The moves also could be construed as competitive response. Earlier this year, AT&T launched its ASP Ecosystem, which involved several partnerships to enable the e-business services.

"BellSouth revealed a strikingly similar plan about two months ago, as e-business for the new millennium," Garland said.

So are all the companies' marketing efforts really part of an ongoing trend to shed past images? In the case of MCI WorldCom, "this is very much a repositioning play and not much else," Garland said.