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Technology Stocks : Intel Corporation (INTC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (89063)	9/28/1999 7:19:00 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

FOCUS-First of Intel's Internet data centers operational (updates with closing stock price) By Therese Poletti SANTA CLARA, Calif., Sept 28 (Reuters) - Intel Corp. (NasdaqNM:INTC - news) said its first data center providing Internet hosting services for corporate customers is up and running. It also announced a slew of partnerships as part of its new foray into the fast-growing Web hosting business. The computer chip giant is investing over $1 billion to set up data centers around the world to establish its new Internet services hosting business, called Intel Online Services, as a serious player in a market where it will compete with big computer services companies and telecommunications giants. Intel first opened a development facility in Folsom, Calif., to perform initial stress testing on its server configuations, to test that they can handle additional users. Making sure that a group of servers -- a server farm -- can handle massive amounts of new users is key for Internet companies, which run their businesses from their Web sites. The first big data center, located in Santa Clara across the street from Intel's headquarters, is an 85,000 square foot facility that has the capacity to host over 10,000 servers. The command center of the data center looks like a command center at NASA, with rows and rows of terminals facing 10 big screens, where operators can monitor the status of all the running servers, as well as keep an eye on world news. The facilities have intense 24-hour security and barbed-wire fencing surrounding back-up power generators. Intel is also planning data centers for Fairfax, Va., Tokyo and London. It said that its first data center customers include the e-Citi unit of financial services titan Citigroup (NYSE:C - news), Internet media company ExciteAtHome Corp.'s (NasdaqNM:ATHM - news) Shopping Service, and Japanese electronics group NEC Corp. . The move is another step by Intel to diversify beyond its core but slower-growing microprocessor business. As part of its new focus on becoming a supplier to different parts of the Internet economy, Intel announced in April that it would build several data centers so that small and medium-sized companies could easily set up electronic commerce activities over the Internet. ``Intel has expanded its mission,' said Michael Aymar, vice president and general manager of Intel's online services business. ``We have changed our mission to be the building block supplier of the Internet economy.' Intel has also been making big investments in its networking communications business, where it has made about 11 acquisitions in the past two years, as it beefs up its offerings of networking chips to make routers, switches and other networking equipment faster and more reliable. With its new online services business, Intel is targeting a market that is predicted to grow to about $12 billion by the year 2003, up from $1.5 billion this year, according to International Data Corp. in Framingham, Mass. ``This is where people tend to think the action is going to be going forward,' said Steve Murray, an analyst with IDC. ``People have found that running these Web farms, or server farms, for an e-commerce site gets to be a pretty complex beast and there is a lot of hard core IT (information technology) knowledge required, and those skills are hard to find.' Intel's Aymar said that one question he is asked frequently is: What does Intel, the world's largest computer chip maker, know about the data center business? ``This is how we run our company,' he said. Aymar said Intel's internal global corporate network handles two million e-mail messages a day and has 99.99 percent uptime, and Intel's internal customer support handles 1,500 queries a day. He said in setting up the data centers the company is also tapping into its experience in designing and building massive chip manufacturing facilities. Intel also announced several partnerships, including one with UUNET, a unit of long distance provider MCI Worldcom Inc. (NasdaqNM:WCOM - news) for network services, and with financial services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, Proxicom Inc. (NasdaqNM:PXCM - news), Razorfish Inc. (NasdaqNM:RAZF - news) and iXL Inc., a subsidiary of iXL Enterprises Inc. (NasdaqNM:IIXL - news), for Web site development and services. Intel's shares closed off slightly, down $0.6875 to $77.50 in very active trading on Tuesday. biz.yahoo.com