Intel Offers Full-Service Web Hosting

Intel Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC), the world’s largest chip maker, announced yesterday that it has a launched a new Internet services hosting business. The new billion-dollar venture, known as Intel Online Services, will provide “second-generation” Web hosting to companies worldwide.

In addition to providing and managing the facilities and network, Intel will buy, integrate and deploy all the hardware and software that is required to run applications. Intel contends that this type of hosting will provide better reliability and faster development of e-business solutions.

“We believe Intel Online Services’ second-generation approach fills an important need in a surge economy which is characterized by the dynamic unpredictability of Internet demand,” said Mike Aymar, vice president and general manager for Intel Online Services. “The benefit of Intel Online Services is the rapid time-to-market it provides solutions developers, as well as optimal hosting reliability for customers.”

First Two Service Centers Are Operational

Intel announced that its first two service centers — an 85,000 square-foot production facility in Santa Clara, California and a development facility in Folsom, California — are up and running. The Santa Clara center can host more than 10,000 servers, according to Intel.

Intel is spending more than $1 billion (US$) on service centers. The company is working on a service center in Northern Virginia and has plans for service centers in Japan and England. The 73,000 square-foot Virginia facility is expected to house more than 8,000 servers and be fully operational in the first quarter of 2000. The Japan and England centers are expected to be operational in the first half of 2000.

Citigroup, Excite@Home Are Customers

Intel disclosed that Citigroup, Excite@Home and NEC are among the hosting service’s new customers. The company is working with consulting companies such as iXL, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Proxicom, Razorfish and US Interactive to make e-business solutions more efficient. In addition, networking company UUNet is working with Intel to jointly define a set of service center offerings. UUNet will help Intel create network management capabilities for service centers by providing routing services.

Intel is also working closely with e-commerce solutions provider Pandesic. EHobbies.com, which is launching October, will be one of the first Pandesic customers hosted by Intel.