IBM Ups Web Hosting Security

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January 05, 1998, Issue: 696
Section: Bandwidth

IBM Ups Web Hosting Security

Kate Gerwig

By adding a virtual LAN-based architecture, IBM Global Web Solutions has beefed up security of its hosting services while cutting costs for its customers.

By creating a new VLAN environment at its main Schaumburg, Ill., server farm, where it supports more than 1,000 servers, IBM eliminated the need to build separate LAN segments to provide customers the security they need. IBM plans to change the architecture of its nine other server farms later this year, using a variety of switches from development partner Xylan Corp.

IBM provides dedicated bandwidth to customers' mainframes for data feeds and updates, using permanent virtual circuits separated by a firewall from the rest of the server farm.

"It's an order of magnitude change that allows us to modify customers' hosting services in a day vs. a week," said Nancy Faigen, vice president of IBM's Global Web Solutions. In the process, it cut monthly service prices for Unix and Windows NT hosting to a range between $2,195 and $3,200, a 20 percent to 30 percent reduction, according to Faigen.

"IBM is trying to sell a high availability, very secure solution for the high end of the Web-hosting marketplace," said Yankee Group analyst Matthew Kovar.

BOC Gases, a multinational industrial gas provider based in London, hosts an extranet service at IBM's Schaumburg server farm, where research and development institutions and commercial companies can check inventory, place orders and pay for them online via American Express.

Good Performance

"I needed scalability and high security," said Fulton Wilcox, director of information management at BOC Gases. "We didn't have to worry about security issues ourselves because IBM's performance has been so good."

In the past, IBM's Web-hosting customers may have been sharing a token ring environment or an Ethernet segment, which could be a security risk for all the other companies if someone hacked into one customer's site.

Although having multiple customers' boxes on a single LAN has been standard industry practice, high-end hosting companies such as Digex, GTE Internetworking and Uunet Technologies Inc. are thinking about moving to this dedicated setup.

"By setting up the virtual LAN, we don't have to recable the place every time the customer needs to make a change," according to Jim Adrian, manager of architecture and design development at IBM's content hosting services. "We virtually route the customer's traffic through a private LAN environment that's integrated into the switch structure itself," Adrian said.