IBM Global Services, considered by some analysts to be a sleeping
giant in the struggling managed-hosting services provider market,
yesterday announced a set of 30 further services.
Including a wide array of offerings ranging from security
assessments and design, to Linux implementation for the Intel
hardware platform, to assisting small Web-hosting customers with
their retail Web site implementation; IBM Global Services claims to
be focused on fulfilling customer needs beyond co-location
services.
"In [large enterprise] companies, they tend to outsource for skill
and resource versus outsourcing for facility [usage]," said Jim
Gant, vice president of e-business hosting for IBM Global Services.
"Most of our customers have data centres. They don't need space,
they need speed to market."
Despite its global customer base and hosting capabilities, the
company has garnered lukewarm attention over the past few years
compare to its heavy-marketed Web-hosting competitors such as
Digex, Exodus Communications, and Verio, said Dana Tardelli,
research analyst for Aberdeen Group.
"[IBM Global Services] is an organisation that through its history
attracts the types of customers that have an affinity toward
outsourcing and a need to solve a business problem," Tardelli said.
"Those are the types of customers [all Web hosters] salivate
over."
Tardelli said Digex, a solid market leader still working out the
kinks of its acquisition by telecomm company Worldcom, stands as
the strongest competitor to IBM's Web-hosting fortunes since it,
too, is not shackled by a glut of unused colocation space that is
causing pain to other industry players.
The hosting security services announced yesterday include security
health check, which allows customers to identify vulnerabilities
and prepare their Web sites for possible attack, and firewall
management and design to protect applications from unwanted visitor
tampering. The security bundle also includes intrusion detection
and antivirus services, Gant said.
The e-commerce services package is driven by IBM's WebSphere
Commerce Suite Pro. Designed to help users create a Web-based
catalogue system, it features Web domain and address services,
network and back-up restoration services, and server offerings to
prepare the site for transaction volume. Configurations are
available for entry-level packages on IBM eServer xSeries servers
running Microsoft Windows NT, and for more complex deployments on
eServer pSeries running the AIX operating systems, IBM officials
said in a statement.
Currently limited to the Intel platform, IBM's new Linux
Web-hosting services will allow customers to choose Linux Red Hat
6.2 support as well as applications designed for Solaris, Windows
2000, NT, and AIX. Gant said IBM plans to bolster its hosting
services to platforms beyond Intel.
Gant said IBM Global Services is taking full advantage of its
strong professional service reputation and leveraging parts of IBM
to gain ground in a hosting market that is rapidly losing capital
and customer confidence. As an example, Gant cited the company's
new security services bundle offering, which was developed jointly
with IBM's business innovation solution (BIS) arm. He said that in
the future, IBM Global Services would play a large role in pushing
managed services toward the application side - still a complex and
cumbersome endeavour being tackled by large hosting providers.
"This is a long race and IBM is in it for long haul. It's an
industry that's been characterised more by niche players. In part,
the breadth of what we're doing will give us legs in the long
haul," Gant added.