XO forges ahead with hosting services

ATLANTA--XO Communications announced today the opening of a new hosting data center in Fremont, Calif. The new center will provide XO’s enterprise customers with high-speed Internet connections via the company’s metro fiber networks. According to Barbara Branaman, director of product management hosting solutions for XO, this new data center provides enterprise customers with faster content delivery and increased reliability of customer traffic.

Like many of its other hosting facilities around the country, this new center will feature 24-hour server monitoring and customer support, fire suppression capabilities and pay-by-the-hour server support. Because the center is equipped with multiple power sources, Branaman also said the center will be immune from the rolling blackouts that have plagued California for months.

XO is forging ahead with its hosting service strategy despite the economic slowdown in the telecom industry and the ever-increasing number of dot-coms that are closing their doors on the West Coast. According to Branaman, XO’s hosting solutions division has not been too badly affected by the current economic climate. In fact, she says XO’s hosting business is doing quite well as more and more small- to medium-sized businesses in the region are starting to outsource their IT departments or cutting back on the purchase of equipment.

"A lot of our customers don’t want the hassle of having to figure out what equipment they need," she says. "They want things simplified and they want someone else to figure out a solution that meets their needs."

The other reason XO is doing fine in the current economic climate, she says, is because of the company’s diverse service portfolio, which includes telco hotels, Internet access,virtual private networks (VPNs) and local and long-distance voice services.

During Supercomm, XO also announced the release of an enhanced IP-based VPN service offering. According to Scott Pace, a spokesperson for the company, XO will now be offering customers a remote access solution. This allows XO’s VPN customers to access to their corporate networks whether they are connected to the Internet via XO or another service provider. XO is also offering its customers the opportunity to purchase or rent their customer premises equipment.

"Businesses seek flexibility, ubiquity and security when choosing a managed virtual private network service," says J.P. Gownder, an analyst with the Yankee Group. "XO's VPN solutions offer pricing flexibility for both wide area networking and remote access applications so that firms of different sizes can purchase just the right amount of bandwidth....The new VPN service complements XO’s existing portfolio of data and voice services nicely."
Robert Vosper is managing editor of Telecom Business magazine. He can be reached at rvosper@intertec.com.