A Sunny Outlook For Digex

Some IT customers hesitate to give up control of their applications to a hosting company. Others, however, maintain turning to an outside provider is a wise and efficient use of resources.

Geiger, for example, a privately held, Lewiston, Maine-based promotional products distributor that publishes calendars, planners and the Farmers' Almanac, recently struck a two-year agreement with Digex for the managed hosting of its extranet and product site.

"As more and more of our business is being conducted online, we need a managed hosting provider that offers the experience, flexibility and security we want," says Jo-An Lantz, executive vice president of Geiger's promotional products group. Geiger is affiliated with more than 500 sales officials in 20 sales offices across the United States and Puerto Rico that will be linked, officials say, through the extranet.

Digex, which has provided hosting services since the mid-1990s, offers a totally managed approach through SmartServices, its suite of IT services. SmartServices encompasses security, backup, reporting, administration and monitoring.

Security concerns have become a leading issue for companies turning to an outside provider, says Steve Keifer, director of business development for Laurel, Md.-based Digex. "We are seeing more demand for intrusion detection," he says. "Now there's a need for real-time monitoring for hacker behavior on each of our servers."

The Geiger online site that Digex will host is called Geigermall. It includes access to thousands of promotional products designed to stimulate trade-show attendance, readership, sales leads, brand recognition and more. The company also is implementing a virtual store that will allow corporate clients to maintain actual e-commerce sites for brand merchandising programs.

The Web site is built on a multiserver Sun Unix platform that uses Oracle database technology and multiple managed firewalls. Digex will support those firewalls.

Like its predecessors, SmartServices is offered as a package, rented monthly and easily updated as technology evolves. Such flexibility is critical as more companies consider turning to solution providers for hosted IT services.

"The idea is to allow these companies to focus on more strategic things like capacity planning, performance improvements and overall business strategy," Keifer says.

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