AT&T today announced an aggressive campaign to transition businesses and government agencies whose Web-hosting operations have been thrown into doubt as numerous service providers closed their operations over the last year.

AT&T's transition program provides customers flexible financing options, complimentary installation, expedited contracting, service assurance guarantees and aggressive pricing. The program is designed to ease the challenges of migrating Web hosting operations for both U.S.-based customers and international corporations with Web hosting needs in North America.

The program is being complemented by an advertising campaign scheduled over the next few weeks. AT&T also has established a rapid response team to address customers' immediate needs to transition Web hosting operations.

According to Forrester Research's April 2003 Technographics survey of information technology buyers, AT&T is the leading Web hosting provider among those surveyed.

"Our first priority is serving customers who already are stranded or fear that possibility as providers turn off the lights in their Web hosting facilities," said Betsy Bernard, AT&T president. "While others are scaling down their investments or even abandoning this space, AT&T has forged forward and fundamentally integrated our Internet Data Centers (IDCs) into our networking architecture. That gives us tremendous economies of scale, as well as the flexibility to offer a valuable set of services, options and capabilities to companies whose hosting and 'net' applications are the lifeblood of their business."

AT&T continues to invest, expand and experience significant growth in its Web hosting business, which includes a broad range of customer-managed to AT&T-managed services and already generates hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue. The company's total hosting business is growing at several times the industry average. And AT&T managed hosting services grew by more than 100 percent last year.

AT&T has seen a 42 percent increase in the number of customers in its IDCs in the past year. The company recently opened new IDCs in China (Hong Kong), France (Nice) and Australia (Sydney), bringing its total number of centers to 21 across three continents, including 13 in the United States.

"There's a lot to be said for the security, reliability, economies of scale and innovation that we have committed to and can deliver to the business customer in this space," Bernard added.

AT&T Hosting Transition Program

The Hosting Transition Program offers businesses and government agencies migration incentives under current and customer-specific packages. Current Hosting Transition Offer

Under the current package, AT&T will waive one month of recurring charges and offer customers hardware loaner or trade-in/up programs and financing options. Customers also will receive complimentary:

<ul> <li>Project management support, such as on-site surveys and quality assurance;</li>
<li>Engineering support, including equipment inventory; and</li>
<li>Equipment transport up to 300 miles.</li></ul>
Customer-Specific Package

With the customer-specific package, AT&T offers enhanced complimentary transition services, including:

<ul> <li>Project management support and professional services to design and deploy the customer's hosted solution;</li>
<li>Installation for Internet connectivity, various AT&T managed services, such as security, load balancing, virtual private network and storage;</li>
<li>Engineering support, such as analysis of detailed migration plan; and</li>
<li>Hardware trade-in/up, loaner and financing options.</li></ul>
AT&T also offers a range of transition assistance programs across its enterprise networking solutions, such as dedicated implementation managers and a consulting team to help customers integrate AT&T's Internet Protocol (IP) virtual private network (VPN) services into their business systems and applications.

AT&T's hosting customers include some of the most recognized names in the United States, such as Marriott, Kodak, United States Olympic Committee, and 1-800-flowers.com; U.S. government agencies, including the Office of Personnel Management and General Services Administration; and global companies like Sony Entertainment, Jaguar Racing and Novell.

AT&T also has signed hosting deals with Aquent, a Boston-based temporary staffing agency; AssetPoint, a Greenville, S.C., provider of integrated enterprise asset management software and service; the Douglas County School System in Atlanta; Intellicare, a South Portland, Maine company that owns and operates the nation's largest distributed network of medical contact centers; and Intervoice, a Dallas-based voice recognition company.

"AT&T's ability to integrate its leading enterprise network services with a full suite of managed hosting services creates a compelling offering that supports the business continuity initiatives of businesses," according to Yankee Group Senior Analyst Carrie Lewis.

"AT&T's ability to connect a customers' data center to AT&T's own data centers and to leverage its Integrated Global Enterprise Management System to provide a complete range of services from managing and monitoring network operations to delivering applications across a customer's extended networking environment is unmatched in the communications industry," adds Lewis.

AT&T has the ability to fully manage a business' hosting environment from the network layer all the way up through applications performance. AT&T's full suite of scalable Internet Protocol (IP) and managed hosting services includes business continuity, disaster recovery, content distribution, storage, managed security and firewall services and load balancing across multiple data center locations.

In addition, the AT&T Managed Services Portal provides managed hosting customers with personalized, secure access to detailed information about their AT&T-hosted infrastructure and applications.

At the heart of AT&T Web hosting is networking integration. Because the company's IDCs sit on the AT&T global network, AT&T can tie businesses' existing data networks, such as frame relay, VPN, asynchronous transfer mode and private line, directly into AT&T IDCs, securely linking customers' critical back-office operations, such as supply chain management and order fulfillment, to their Web-based applications.

More information on AT&T Web hosting, including an IDC virtual tour, and other managed services is available at www.att.com/business.

About AT&T

AT&T (www.att.com) is among the premier voice and data communications companies in the world, serving businesses, consumers, and government. The company runs one of the most sophisticated communications networks in the U.S., backed by the research and development capabilities of AT&T Labs. A leading supplier of data, Internet and managed services for the public and private sectors, AT&T offers outsourcing and consulting to large businesses and government. The company is a market leader in local, long distance and Internet services, as well as transaction-based services like prepaid cards, collect calling and directory assistance. With approximately $37 billion of revenue, AT&T has about 40 million residential customers and 4 million business customers, who depend on AT&T for high-quality communications. AT&T has garnered several awards for outstanding performance and customer service.