Allegiance Telecom Inc. (www.allegiancetele.com) launched Web Office, a new service using private, secure websites that is designed to allow businesses to offer employees access to business information using private corporate intranets. The service provides updates on company news and vital data, shared timetables and calendars, a central repository for forms and other mission critical information, discussion boards for collaboration, a one-stop view of e-mail from multiple services, and a shared company-wide address book. Allegiance also announced the acquisition in early October of Virtualis Systems Inc., a privately held web hosting company and ASP based in North Hollywood, Calif. Virtualis has more than 40,000 hosted domains, and offers a proprietary suite of 25 e-business management software applications. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
BellSouth Corp. (www.bellsouth.com) introduced its e-Platform for business, which leverages the company's existing network-based infrastructure and support capabilities for e-business. The e-Platform will include services such as dedicated and custom hosting solutions, managed storage and security, content distribution, caching, disaster recovery, and ASP services. BellSouth will use solutions from Qwest Communications International Inc. (www.qwest.com) and Sun Microsystems (www.sun.com) to support the e-Platform.
Level 3 Communications Inc. (www.level3.com) will offer a new service that uses advanced Ethernet to offer web-focused businesses faster Internet access at about half the cost of similar services. The new (3) CrossRoads EPOP service provides 1 gig Internet access.
Cable & Wireless a-Services, a subsidiary of Cable & Wireless Inc. (www.cwusa.com), is now offering a-Workspace, an end-to-end, fully managed collaborative computing service. It combines Cable & Wireless Internet access with Compaq Computer Corp. (www.compaq.com) Internet PCs and Microsoft Corp. (www.microsoft.com) applications and support.
TeleBright.com (www.telebright.com) will become one of the first anchor tenants on NBC Internet Inc.'s AllBusiness.com (www.allbusiness.com) website, which will promote TeleBright.com services to a large base of small business owners.
Genuity Inc. (www.genuity.com) is launching Black Rocket, a network services platform designed for building e-businesses. Black Rocket consists of integrated, pre-provisioned and managed Internet access, hosting, security and transport, with a delivery guarantee of 10 business days or less. The Black Rocket platform is targeted at six different e-business areas, including goods and services sales, business partner trading, content and streaming media publishing, secure remote corporate information access, supply chain management, and customer relationship management. Prices start at $25,000 per month.
CDS Business Mapping LLC (www.telecomsitesource.com) introduced Fiberloops.com, an exchange for carriers looking to lease network elements and real estate. Using the website, carriers will be able to geographically search for lit and dark fiber, rights-of-way, collocation facilities and telecom hotels.
DSLnetworks (www.dslnetworks.com) announced a new product called 3PN, or Layer 3 Private Network. 3PN provides businesses with alternatives to frame relay and traditional VPNs by integrating DSL for the last mile, and a private IP backbone network for creating a fully meshed nationwide private data network.
HotVoice Communications International Inc. (www.hotvoice.com) launched its HotVoice Communications Suite, which is a new service integrating IP telephony, web talk, instant messaging and unified messaging in a single package.
