IBM last week opened a new hosting centre to meet increased demand for outsourced management of e-business sites.
IBM's E-business Hosting Centre, which is located in London's Docklands, is designed to offer companies 99.99 percent network availability.
Malcolm Carter, director of strategic partner development at IBM Global Services, said, "The e-business hosting market is maturing. Companies have realised the importance of getting a Web site up and running, but now the demands on these Web sites are growing and they must be managed to provide security and resilience to their users."
IBM can offer co-location and hosting. With co-location, IBM provides the space and connectivity but leaves the customer's IT department to design the architecture, buy the hardware and manage the system. With hosting IBM owns the system and manages it for the customer for a monthly fee. It can also involve additional services such as site monitoring and reporting.
IBM currently has two further hosting centres, in Portsmouth and Warwick, and will open another facility near Heathrow early next year.
At London's Docklands, IBM will provide an entry-level service that lets customers manage their own essential business operations. The customer has responsibility for Web site management and owns the server hardware, software and applications. The two server farms at Portsmouth and Warwick are dedicated to the management of more complex e-business hosting services, where IBM provides management for customers with business-critical Web sites, such as Internet banks.
The hosting needs of e-businesses are not predictable, and differ from traditional outsourcing requirements, Carter said. He said hosting is becoming increasingly attractive to firms because it lets them bypass skills shortages and adapt to technical developments while still maintaining a secure and reliable site.
"Companies have been caught by surprise by the speed in which e-business has accelerated. In the UK, many e-businesses are bypassing the co-location phase and going straight to more comprehensive hosted services," said Carter.
