(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Telecommunications provider AT&T (www.att.com) announced on Thursday that it has opened its first data center in Bangalore, India to meet the growing demand from multinational customers in India for online data centers.
The announcement comes just a week after the company announced it plans to make drastic cuts to its workforce, which will include laying off 12,000 people and reducing new technology spending.
The new Bangalore facility is part of AT&T’s previously announced $1 billion planned global network and portfolio investment for 2008. Last month, AT&T opened its first Asian super Internet data center in Singapore to provide a regional gateway to the Internet and its network to deliver its utility computing services, AT&T Synaptic Hosting.
The company also simultaneously opened four additional super IDCs in Amsterdam, which is the European hub, as well as three locations in the US.
Through the facility, customers will have access to a wide range of AT&T’s fully integrated managed hosting, application and networking services to support their data and e-commerce needs, while being connected to AT&T’s existing suite of managed data services in India.
According to the press release, the new data centers are built to the same “rigid specifications consistent with AT&T’s other global data centres” and are “protected from intrusion and failure with the same multi-layered security, failsafe redundancy, diversity measures, and rapid response recovery measures.”
“The new Bangalore center underscores AT&T’s commitment to the rapidly expanding telecommunications sector in India and highlights the rapidly growing demand in this market,” says Gopi Gopinath, chairman and CEO of AT&T Global Network Services India. “With the further enhancement of our hosting facilities in the Asia Pacific region, AT&T will be able to support multinational customers in India who turn to AT&T for integrated hosting and network solutions, allowing them to focus on running their businesses.”
The new facility is directly connected to AT&T’s global MPLS backbone to offer a range of hosting solutions, as well as access to technologies such as server virtualization, application acceleration and patent-pending visual management tools.
In October 2006, AT&T became the first global telecommunications provider to gain national long distance and international long distance licenses in India through AT&T Global Network Services India, an AT&T joint venture.
Then in early 2007, AT&T Global Network Services India launched its commercial services to provide AT&T’s global customers who are operating in India with the same standard of communications services that they use from AT&T elsewhere in the world.
Later, In November 2007, AT&T designated India as a separate operating region, to help meet the growing demand for telecom services in India.
In other news regarding data center build outs by telecommunication providers, Bell Canada announced on Thursday it has built three new data centers in Calgary, Toronto and Montreal in an effort to expand its National Hosting Services portfolio.
