Asp database

Verio adds Oracle8i database to ASP offerings

ENGLEWOOD, COLO. Responding to the growing demand for managed services from small to midsize companies, Web hosting firm Verio announced last week it will offer the Or-acle8i database on a monthly subscription basis.

The service will give users the benefit of a high-end database without the steep upfront costs, Verio says. While costs of licensing the Oracle Si database vary, most smaller companies probably couldn't afford the hardware and personnel associated with running the database inhouse, says Chris Sedlacek, Verio vice president of applications product management.

The relational database will be hosted on dedicated and shared servers in Verio data centers. The hosted Oracle8i product can be purchased as a stand-alone service and does not have to be part of a Web hosting package, the company says. It can be hosted on Verio's proprietary shared servers or on Sun Solaris servers in a dedicated environment.

"We see that businesses'Web presence are going to get more complex and they'll need to do more things in order to be successful," Sedlacek says. Market research firm IDC expects the Web hosting market to balloon in the next few years, growing from about $4 billion in 2000 to more than $24 billion in 2004. Much of that revenue will come from fully managed services, analysts say.

The database offering adds to the managed services supported by Verio, a firm that until recently focused primarily on collocation for small and midsize companies. Sedlacek says Verio chose the Oracle8i database because of its strength in e-commerce and Internet-based transaction processing.

Pricing starts at $250 per month, with a $250 setup fee, for a standard Oracle8i database on a shared server and 10 concurrent connections.

The shared server price includes back-up, recovery and monitoring services.The cost of running the database on a dedicated server starts at $4,200 per month, with a $3,200 start-up fee. Managed services are not yet available in the dedicated environment.

Verio: www.verio.com; Oracle: www.oracle.com Subscribe to our free newsletter. DocFinder: 5434