AT&T announces two new Internet data centres

SHANGHAI: AT&T Inc. today announced it is opening two new Internet Data Centres in Shanghai, China, and in Oak Brook, Ill. located outside Chicago.

The centres, the latest additions to AT&T's 1.8 million square-foot global Internet data centre footprint, will help the company further accelerate its position in the hosting business worldwide.

The new Shanghai facility, located in the city's Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park, is the second AT&T Internet data centre in that city. AT&T's first Shanghai data centre, also in Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park, opened its doors to customers this summer.

AT&T will operate the Shanghai facilities in partnership with local service providers and will coordinate with those local service providers for service delivery. AT&T, however, will be customers' single point of contact for Enterprise Hosting Services being delivered in China.

Along with the Shanghai facilities, AT&T added more space earlier this year to its Internet data centre in Hong Kong. Combined, both Shanghai and Hong Kong centres have nearly doubled AT&T's web hosting footprint in the Asia/Pacific region since the beginning of 2006.

In the United States, the new Oak Brook facility complements AT&T's data centre in nearby Lisle, Ill. to further expand the company's hosting presence in the Chicago area. Housed in an AT&T central switching office, the Oak Brook Internet data centre offers customers convenient connectivity to the AT&T network backbone.

In addition, it maintains multiple active power and cooling distribution paths, redundant components and fault-tolerant design to provide 99.999 percent availability. As a result, the Oak Brook centre has a Tier IV site infrastructure rating from the Uptime Institute its highest classification among data centres for reliability, availability and serviceability.

"Hyatt Hotels relies on AT&T's hosting services to deliver fast and  efficient service to our customers on our award-winning Hyatt.com website," said Joan Lowell, VP, Electronic Distribution for the Chicago-based Global Hyatt Corporation, a long-time AT&T hosting customer. "Hyatt.com is often the front door to our hotels for our customers, and we want that initial interaction to be a pleasing, high-quality experience.

AT&T's hosting services helps ensure that our website is easy to use, responsive and customer-friendly with high-speed, high-bandwidth capabilities for peak performance and around-the-clock monitoring for unmatched security and reliability. That gives us peace of mind and enables us to focus on our core business."

The new facilities bring the total number of AT&T Internet data centres to 32, including 17 data centres within the U.S., 6 in Europe, and 9 in the Asia/Pacific region.

The addition of the new data centres is the latest move by AT&T to participate in the booming global hosting business. In China, the total enterprise managed service market is expected to top $3.7 billion (U.S) in 2006, according to the research firm IDC, while in the U.S, IDC forecasts the market in 2006 will reach $6.9 billion.

The addition of the Oak Brook data centre caps a year that saw AT&T grow its data centre footprint in the U.S. with expansions of facilities in Lithia Springs, Georgia, and Mesa, Arizona. Both centres added 25 per cent more space to handle increasing customer demand for hosting services, and more expansions are planned elsewhere in the U.S. as well as globally for 2007.

"We continue to invest in growing our business to support customers and to meet the red-hot demand of businesses large and small for hosting services," said Steve Caniano, vice president, AT&T. "The additions of our second facility in China and our new centre near Chicago are further proof that businesses around the globe are turning to AT&T to help them manage their IT environment, so they can focus on running their business."

In addition to expanding its global data centre footprint, AT&T took significant steps in 2006 to grow its Enterprise Hosting Services business beginning with the launch in May of a Hosting Services practice focusing on online gaming. The practice has a dedicated team of AT&T Labs and operations engineers partnered with hosting sales specialists who are devoted specifically to its online gaming customers.

The teams use the resources of AT&T's global data centres to provide infrastructure that enable online gaming companies to deliver their game content efficiently through AT&T's Global IP backbone.

Also in 2006, AT&T announced and completed the acquisition of applications service provider US internetworking (USI). The acquisition of USI complements AT&T's existing managed services capabilities and paves the way for the company to drive more deeply into the applications management space with new offers for businesses of all sizes.

AT&T Internet data centres are built to provide the highest reliability and security. Each rack or server cabinet, is provided with redundant circuits from several power distribution units backed up by batteries and diesel generators to assure an uninterrupted operation. Chillers and water pumps maintain a consistent operating environment, and humidity levels and temperature thresholds are closely monitored by special sensors.

In addition to security cameras and closed circuit video, other security features include the use of biometric scanners to control access in and around the centre.

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