Jan 29th 2000: AT&T; on Thursday (Jan 27th) powered into the ASP arena with a new hosting and marketing programme called 'Ecosystem for ASPs', backed by a $250m investment in infrastructure.

Online application providers named as charter participants included online messaging services Mi8 and Mail.com, online video providers Intervu and VideoSnap.com, and IT services provider Intelligroup, which offers ecommerce, enterprise apps, and its own web-based user support solution. The scheme gives participants access to co-marketing support from AT&T;, as well as ASP development resources at Cisco, IBM and Sun Microsystems.

AT&T; will host applications across a network of data centres, backed up by supporting network services including network caching and storage. AT&T; said it plans a network of 26 data centres for hosting and colocation, linked by its high-bandwidth OC-48/OC-192 IP backbone, with services available from the second quarter this year. ASPs will also be able to integrate broadband access, virtual ISP services, and virtual private networking into their offerings.

AT&T; lined up an impressive cast of charter supporters for the scheme, including Cisco Systems, HP, IBM, Novell and Sun Microsystems.

Participants will have access to facilities for tuning and testing hosted applications at Sun Microsystems competency centres, including certification to the vendor's SunTone accreditation. They will also have access to IBM's ASP-enabling resources.

The telco launched a new, intelligent content distribution service as part of the Ecosystem announcement. Based on technology from InfoLibria, Inktomi and Novell, it uses advanced network caching to enhance response times and reliability of web-based content including applications.

It also unveiled a new portfolio of enterprise storage services. Storage will be available on EMC hardware based in its Internet data systems. It will also offer a fully managed service in selected data centres, operated by storage utility startup StorageNetworks. Earlier this week (Jan 27th), StorageNetworks announced closing $103m in third round funding led by Dell Computer and international telco and ISP Global Crossing.