The ATS package is essentially “the productization of services customers buy that sit on top of network platform,” he added. The new portfolio includes IP transit, but also Ethernet private line and Ethernet virtual private line services to enable customers to bridge environments in Savvis’ data centers, or across the long-haul network to other data centers or interconnection points, he said. “That way they can pick up services that Savvis does not provide.”

“The biggest piece is the extension of our VPN service,” Poole said. “We were first to market with a managed VPN with security on Nortel/Shasta products. We did a lot of work with Cisco, and they developed a blade on the 12000 that lets us offer security services and beyond.”

That enables Savvis to do WAN optimization and managed applications gateway services without requiring customers to do their own CPE integration, he said.

“Our theme is managed infrastructure,” Poole said. “You can take the basic logical entities – compute, store, security, transport – and abstract those so that the customer doesn’t have to worry about capex planning for that. We can offer those as services integrated in such a way that the customer can continue to deliver the service they set out to do.”

Among the new ATS managed services are network-based virtualized firewalls, distributed denial of service (DDOS) mitigation, network-based intrusion detection systems, virtualized load balancing and SSL acceleration. In the future, Savvis will offer additional connectivity services that optimize performance based on application and enhanced visibility tools for its customer portal. Customers can access the network from a variety of connection methods, ranging from DSL up to 10 Gigabit Ethernet.