Cable and Wireless Rolls Out Business Continuity Services

Cable and Wireless

The services will be provided by the company's Web hosting business, Exodus.

David Greene, vice president of market development, said Exodus has offered disaster recovery services for six years but now aims to broaden its market reach by offering a standard set of service components.

"Our objective is to make this a solution that's accessible to a larger group of customers, customers who saw this [business continuity as an alternative only if they did it in-house," he said.

The services include consulting and evaluation, equipment configuration and setup, managed services such as security, data storage and backup, contingency planning and maintenance.

The services are available at three levels: cold, warm and hot sites. A cold site provides space, physical security, racks and power; a dedicated warm site provides additional equipment; and a dedicated hot site adds a live site for mission-critical applications and managed services.

Cold-site pricing generally starts at $2,000 for the average customer, Greene said.

Cable and Wireless, based here, is targeting the services at large companies with 1,000 employees and up, he said, and companies in financial services, health-care and media industries.

The company will work with partners,including Sun Microsystems, Deloitte, and regional integrators,to sell the services, Greene said.

"We have quite a robust partner program in place that we use to engage regional integrators," he said. "What we find is those companies will come to us when they have a client who needs a particular set of services."