MCI Communications Corp. announced new Web hosting service guarantees and Web-based customer service tools at today at Spring Internet World '98.
MCI's Web hosting customers are now entitled to a new service level agreement (SLA) that will offer a full day's credit if their Web site is unavailable for ten minutes or more, said Steven Von Rump, vice president of enterprise marketing at MCI.
The guarantee is for customers that use MCI's shared and dedicated server Web hosting services.
Web hosting customers will also be able to more closely monitor activity at MCI's Web server farm in Pentagon City, Va.
In addition to beefing up its Web server farm with two OC-3, 155M bit/sec connections, MCI customers will also be able to monitor performance statistics and usage at the Web server farm on MCI's Internet traffic report Web page. (http://traffic.mci.com).
MCI announced the traffic-reporting page with network utilization and latency metrics late last year (DEC). Now users can monitor their Web server connection and utilization on their specific dedicated Internet access link.
Using in house developed tools, users will be able to enter in their "circuit ID" and their user name and password in order to see how much traffic is being sent over their dedicated Internet connection, Von Rump said.
In addition to SLAs and monitoring tools, MCI also announced that its moving all of its service billing, provisioning, order entry, universal message and customer care services to the Web.
Making a big push into the world of Java, MCI is working closely with Sun Microsystems in developing its network wide applets, said Ron McMurtrie, vice president of product marketing at MCI.
Slated for availability this summer, MCI local and long distance voice, data and Internet access customers will be able to get all of their billing information off of the Web at no additional cost.
"In fact, down the road we see a world where users will have to pay for a paper bill," Von Rump said.
RELATED LINKS
ISPs roll out full blown QoS?
Network World, 12/29/97.
AT&T Worldnet gets its Internet ducks in a row
Network World, 1/12/98.
Apply for your free subscription to Network World. Click here. Or get Network World delivered in PDF each week.
Request a reprint or permission to use this article.
