BellSouth Expands E-Business Platform Capabilities With Security and Additional Managed Services

Business Wire, April 23, 2001

Business Editors & Technology Writers

ATLANTA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 23, 2001

BellSouth Provides Reliable and Secure

Hosting Solutions for Customers

BellSouth (NYSE: BLS) announced today that it will be extending its managed services capabilities to include two additional services - Dedicated Web Hosting and Managed Security Services - as well as upgrades to the Windows(R) 2000(TM) and Sun Microsystems(R) Solaris(TM) 8 operating platforms.

Supported as part of BellSouth's "e-Platform," the new managed services exploit the power of an extensive fiber-based e-Business platform to deliver the speed, reliability and security required for today's mission critical e-business applications.

At the core of the platform, the BellSouth e-Business Centers, support a broad spectrum of e-business applications and services in a secure location, and extend BellSouth's existing network capabilities and historical strengths in reliability, real-time availability and customer service to support today's growing Web-based economy. Today's announcement of Dedicated Web Hosting and Managed Security Services mark an expansion of BellSouth's growing e-Platform.

Dedicated Web Hosting provides business customers with a complete service offering that delivers the performance, network bandwidth and flexibility needed to allow them to succeed in the e-business environment. The new service is ideal for companies who want to eliminate the hassles and overhead of setting up and managing a complicated hosting infrastructure. As part of the service, BellSouth will provide the servers and operating systems while also managing and maintaining the equipment to reduce capital investments customers need to make.

Features of BellSouth's Dedicated Web Hosting include:

-- Provision and management of equipment and operating system

-- 24X7 monitoring and technical assistance

-- Full suite of management reports

-- Additional services to meet customer needs

BellSouth Managed Security Services is a suite of value-added security services that provide BellSouth e-Business customers with protection against Internet-based security threats. BellSouth is extending this already successful service to customers who host within BellSouth's e-Business Centers. Managed Security Services provides an integrated framework of round-the-clock managed security services that support a company's e-business infrastructure. This enables a safe, trusted environment for organizations to conduct e-business.

Features of BellSouth's Managed Security Services include:

-- A turnkey solution that includes provisioning of certified

security platforms

-- Custom configuration and installation

-- Intrusion Detection and Response

-- 24X7 monitoring by a staff of dedicated experts

-- Managed Firewall

-- Anti-virus and Anti-vandal Filtering

-- Web site Blocking

"These additional managed offerings enhance our comprehensive portfolio of value-added services available through BellSouth's e-Business Centers," said Rex Adams, vice president of e-Business Product Management, BellSouth Customer Markets. "Our end-to-end solution means that customers do not have to provide their own hardware, nor do they have to worry about system maintenance and security. This leaves them free to focus on their critical core competencies."

"We selected to host eBank Software with BellSouth's e-Business Centers because it was the most reliable and advanced platform that we could find within the market," said David Crawford, director of Implementation Services of eBank Software, Inc. "Our hosted data is customers' financial and banking information and it is imperative that we work with only the best, most reliable provider. These new services further expand the options available to eBank Software and the range of services that eBank can make available to its customers."

Realizing that customers have a choice of equipment and platforms, BellSouth has taken steps to ensure that customers can receive outstanding service on multiple types of equipment and software platforms. To this end, BellSouth's e-Business Centers now provide support for both Solaris 8 from Sun Microsystems and Windows 2000 from Microsoft Corporation, allowing customers to deploy the latest operating system tools and software applications. Customers migrating to these new platform versions are assured that the on-site team of engineers at the e-Business Centers are trained and certified on both platforms and can provide complete support for customer devices featuring these platforms.

BellSouth's e-Platform initiative includes state-of-the-art e-Business Centers complemented by 3.5 million miles of fiber optic cable, 1,650 central offices, 50 BellSouth Managed Facilities, 17,000 SONET rings and over 500 fast-packet switches to create a distributed e-business platform. With broadband connectivity provided by the BellSouth e-Platform, business customers get the advantage of reduced latency, better performance, continuous availability, improved caching, greater bandwidth and speed, and closer proximity to their end-users -- transforming the communications network of today into a sophisticated, e-business-enabled platform. BellSouth's e-Business Centers have attained industry accreditation including Sun Microsystems' SunTone(SM) Certification and IBM's Hosting Advantage certificate. For more information, visit www.bellsouth.com/ebiz/.>