C&W, Digital Island offer two-way Web services

In their first concerted joint effort, Cable & Wireless and its recently acquired Digital Island subsidiary launched a Web service to enable customers to transact, deliver and manage e-business content over C&W’s global IP backbone and hosting facilities.

Three companies--Walt Disney Internet Group, Cisco Network Academy and Pearson Education--were the first announced users for the multifaceted service.

Digital Island and Cable & Wireless combined have more than a million square feet of data-center capacity in 25 major areas around the world, said Ruann Ernst, president/CEO of Digital Island.

“Cable & Wireless has built a network that reaches 70 countries, and the intelligent network that Digital Island has placed on top of that … reaches about 35 countries,” she said.

Additionally, Digital Island has a set of 2600 edge computers that are enterprise-class equipment to hold application components at the edge that interact over the network with applications at the data center.

“Those edge computers then, in turn, connect to 330 different networks that provide the last-mile access,” Ernst said.

The service is offered in three broad categories--2Transact, 2 Deliver and 2Manage--Ernst said.

2Transact includes managed hosting and secure connectivity. 2Deliver is graphic and static data and live, on-demand streaming, plus managed hosting. 2Manage handles functions like digital-rights management, geographic targeting, content management and monitoring.

While recognizing an overall market slowdown for Web services, Ernst said Digital Island is “seeing the smart enterprises continuing to put more of these applications on the Web, because it helps them save money or make money, and they choose to use an outsourcer versus trying to do it themselves.”

All three two-way Web customers are existing Digital Island customers extending their agreements with the company into this new space, Ernst said.