Web/E-business /

C&W unit launches on-the-fly services

By Jennifer Mears and Denise Pappalardo
Network World, 10/08/01

SAN FRANCISCO - Digital Island, a wholly owned subsidiary of Cable & Wireless since being acquired this summer, last week introduced services designed to go beyond basic Web hosting and content delivery by exploiting the new concept of Web services.

Digital Island, taking advantage of its new parent company's global IP backbone and network of data centers, announced its 2Way Web Services, which are aimed at facilitating two-way application processing and advanced content delivery and management across the Internet.

Consistent with the broader concept of Web services, Digital Island's new offerings let customers create and use application services by stitching together pieces of existing services on the fly. The Web services concept is being promoted by the likes of IBM and Microsoft, and increasingly, by new and established service providers.

"[Digital Island has] taken a whole string of elements that would be required to execute a transaction or push information out to provide interactive customization," says Dan Tardelli, a research analyst with Aberdeen Group. "They've taken every minute service as small as it might be and made it a service itself that can be integrated depending on whether a customer needs it or not, and when they need it."

For example, an online content provider that wants to charge users only in certain instances can use a pay-per-view module, requiring end users pay only for designated downloads. A business running a global Web site can use modules geared for separate locations around the world to ensure the site is updated with advertisements, products and other content appropriate for each location.

In addition to giving customers more flexibility, the offering lets them to pay only for those application services they use.

Tardelli says other hosting providers have developed modularized packages, but what Digital Island offers is different.

"Everyone has gone to preconfigured modules of service, basically the Lego mentality: I'm going to stack Legos and maybe it's not a custom fit, but I can offer it to anybody on the fly. It's premade and scalable," he says. "Digital Island takes it a step further by breaking down the Legos into much smaller pieces. Digital Island's preconfigured modules are much smaller and can be applied on the fly to unique or custom situations."

Digital Island does not yet support emerging Web services standards such Simple Object Access Protocol, which would let the service provider automatically integrate its Web services with external applications. But the company says it is prepping its network to support such emerging standards.

Tim Wilson, chief marketing officer, says the services are priced based on design work, number of transactions sent, amount of content sent and bandwidth used, and a fixed component based on computing assets (people, security and functions). Wilson says a typical client would spend between $100,000 and $300,000 per year, although costs can reach into the millions.