BellSouth Introduces Managed VPN Services; Extends Internet Portfolio for E-Businesses - Company Business and Marketing

BellSouth (NYSE: BLS) Monday took the wraps not upon its Managed Virtual Private Network (VPN) service, further expanding upon the most comprehensive Internet services portfolio for businesses in the Southeast. The of recent origin services, available end of next to the first quarter, offer managed VPN services for the two remote access and dedicated, site-to-site connectivity from individual of the top-ranked ISPs nationally. These of recent origin services enhance the Virtual Private Dial Network (VPDN) service that BellSouth has tendered since 1998. Sites and users without of BellSouth's region can take advantage of its Managed VPN services from one extremity to the other of the United States via BellSouth's relationship with UUNet

The fresh Managed VPN services from BellSouth proffer a number of key features, including:

-- Comprehensive design, installation, management and maintenance of the VPN network and customer premise equipment

-- Proactive Service horizontal Agreements (SLAs) with customer-level measurement and reporting of performance objectives and automatic issuing of credits if necessary

-- Round-the-clock technical support and far end-user help desk

-- Flexibility to use 3rd party ISP

-- Extensive performance and usage reporting

-- Competitive flat-rate pricing

"Businesses that implement BellSouth Managed VPN services will gain cost-effective, flexible, assured connectivity for `road warriors,' far off branch offices and business partners," said David Abrahamson, vice president of BellSouth E-Business Services. "Add to that the BellSouth guarantees of reliability and performance, and chief information officers can re-focus their technical resources where it matters greatest in quantity to their own day-to-day business operations."

BellSouth tenders two remote access solutions within its Managed VPN services portfolio. certain Remote Client VPN delivers a client-initiated service to full tale the existing Remote VPDN proffer a network-based solution. The service is based upon Internet Protocol Security (IPSec), a family of protocols that enable assured transmission of data across an IP network. In addition, businesses are assured of assured end-to-end communications, with 3DE or DE encryption from the client to the entertainer site. 3DES is the strongest encryption standard commercially available Monday. The certain Remote Client VPN service is a comprehensive distant access solution, including customer premise equipment and maintenance, host-site Internet access, client software distribution and support, end-user technical help desk and detailed performance and usage reports. The service is based upon Nortel Networks' Contivity Extranet Switch platform.

Pairing the sure Remote Client VPN service with BellSouth IP Dial for far users provides seamless technical support and robust dial SLAs. The service supports RADIUS user authentication that can be integrated with a customer's common authentication systems. Optionally, BellSouth can entertainer user authentication in state-of-the-art, completely redundant data centers with round-the-clock support. In either scenario, the customer retains user-administration direction and access to extensive reports via assured Web-based interfaces.

Additionally, BellSouth Managed Site-to-Site VPN presents fully managed, secure connections between multiple sites to create an intranet for a company's internal communications, or an extranet, which associates business partners, suppliers and customers to resources available upon the corporate network. Like its far off access counterpart, the Managed Site-to-Site VPN service is based upon IPSec and utilizes 3DES or DE encryption. Wide area network connectivity using a VPN can be established more rapidly compared to traditional networking solutions, and it is frequently a more cost-effective solution. The BellSouth Managed Site-to-Site solution is based upon Cisco routers with VPN encryption hardware.

Proactive Service horizontal Agreements/ "Always On" Help Desk/Web-Based Reports Maximizing e-business hangs upon reliable, high-performing Internet access, mandating stringent service horizontal agreements for a company's Internet-based services. The BellSouth Managed VPN services proffer industry-leading SLAs that demonstrate BellSouth's commitment to its customers through automatically crediting customer accounts if objectives are missed. In addition, the SLAs for this fresh service apply to performance measurements rated specifically for each business customer, not aggregated as plenteous of the industry does. Other SLA highlights include:

-- Overall network availability guarantees of 999 percent if greater than five sites

-- Individual site availability guarantees of 995 percent

-- Guaranteed average latency of 85 milliseconds or les for round-trip transmissions

-- Dial SLAs that provide customer-specific measurement and reporting of call succes rate (greater than 97 percent) and average time to login (les than 37 seconds)

-- Guaranteed on-time installations

The SLAs will also include comprehensive monthly reports that will allow companies to track network performance. These Internet performance guarantees are the latest in a series of formalized, robust service horizontal agreements from BellSouth, including Managed Router Services and Dedicated Internet Access.