• silicon.com
• Technology
• Networks

By Lisa Burroughes, 18 May 2000 00:20

NEWS A £10m Internet hosting centre in central London has won backing from the government, and could shape the future of Web outsourcing for small, high-growth companies, according to one of its first customers. Colt Telecom's latest centre forms part of the company's £800m pan-European investment programme, and provides services which could have a strong appeal for SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises). Matthew St John Sullivan, CEO of Copernicus - one of the first SMEs to sign up to the centre - said outsourcing to a large provider with room for growth can be crucial to a small company's success. "The speed of growth is essential for SMEs. By being able to outsource the Web hosting aspect of its business the SME is able to concentrate on its core competencies. It also makes a far smaller hole in their budgets," he said. UK minister for small business and ecommerce Patricia Hewitt, was present at the official opening of the centre - which Colt claims has the capacity to host 1.3 million Web sites. She said: "The most important thing for the digital economy is to have a brilliant telecoms infrastructure. Business especially has to be able to get cheap, fast and absolutely reliable connections with very high bandwidth. It's very exciting to see Colt expanding like this to make London and the UK the best place in the world for ecommerce." Although many rival ISPs, telcos and storage providers are setting up similar Web-hosting facilities, UK managing director of Colt, Jonathan Watts claims Colt can offer customers a more holistic service than its competitors. "We have great experience of building telecoms networks and what we're doing is taking that and putting it into the Web world. The fact that it is all built on Colt's IP network gives the added security companies are looking for."