Roundup: Level 3, Telx, Blue Coat, Force 10

Here’s a roundup of this week’s headlines from the data center and hosting industry:

Level 3 signs eSchool Solutions. Level 3 Communications (LVLT) announced it has signed an agreement with eSchool Solutions, an education software company based in Orlando, Florida to improve that company's voice performance and facilitate a virtual training platform utilizing Level 3's content delivery network (CDN).  Using the Level 3's voice services and  CDN eSchool will connect more than 29,000 schools and offer remote access to crucial internal training tools, thereby improving organizational productivity. “Our services support administrators and teachers in more than 29,000 schools, and we require network solutions that improve our ability to connect with them reliably and efficiently,” said Tina Santana, executive vice president and chief financial officer for eSchool Solutions. “Working with Level 3 has enabled us to improve our service capabilities and simultaneously enjoy a cost savings, allowing us to invest in other critical areas of our business and enhance our customers’ experiences.”

One Source joins Telx Ethernet Exchange.  Telx announced that leading voice and data networking company One Source Networks has joined the Telx Ethernet Exchange.  In the Telx Chicago data center One Source Networks will leverage the facility-neutral Ethernet Exchange for exchange of data traffic between its users of Ethernet services, including Fortune 1000 enterprise customers. “With its one-to-many network scalability features, Telx’s Ethernet Exchange gives us the ability to rapidly meet our enterprise and service provider customers’ increasing connectivity demands,” said Gina Nomellini, Chief Marketing Officer of One Source Networks.  “After evaluating the Ethernet Exchange offerings available, we selected Telx’s Ethernet Exchange due to the strategic location of the Chicago data center, as well as Telx’s relationship with Neutral Tandem.

Blue Coat introduces ProxyOne appliance. Blue Coat (BCSI) introduced the Blue Coat ProxyOne appliance, bringing the same enterprise-class web security used by 88 percent of the Fortune Global 500 to organizations that require a low-touch solution at an affordable price point.  Aimed at organizations with limited IT resources the hybrid appliance delivers real-time intelligence and automatic protection to allow businesses to safely use the web.  The appliance integrates web filtering, inline malware and anti-virus scanning and on-box reporting to enable safer use of Web 2.0 applications.  “The shift in business to the Web has exposed small and large businesses alike to greater risk, yet smaller businesses often lack the financial and IT resources to protect their users, making them more vulnerable to rapidly evolving Web-based threats,” said Lawrence Orans, research director at Gartner. “These smaller businesses need the same type of Web security that is commonly found in large enterprises but in a solution that is easy to manage, affordable and doesn’t require them to be security experts.”  The ProxyOne appliances are available immediately at $8,999 for 100 users, which includes the appliance, software licenses, automatic security updates and 24x7 support.

Force 10 selected by ReadySpace. Force 10 Newtorks announced that ReadySpace, a leading hosting service provider based in Singapore, has selected the S-Series 1/10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) fiber switch to provide 10GbE performance and reliability for its growing number of customers in South Asia.  “Since we opened in 2002, we’ve prided ourselves and differentiated our business based on our ability to deliver a high level of service, superior peering arrangements and low-latency bandwidth,” said David Loke, executive director, ReadySpace. “However, as our customer demand increased due in part to Singapore’s initiative to provide Gigabit Ethernet services to individual citizens, we selected Force10 Networks because we needed a more dynamic and flexible infrastructure with bulletproof reliability that could flawlessly handle these spikes in network traffic.” The S50s were deployed to replace ReadySpace’s core switches, each configured with 48 GbE and four 10 GbE ports.