Eircom has revealed a new metro Ethernet service for businesses within the vicinity of the Dublin metropolitan area network (MAN) deployed under the Government’s €70m broadband plan. The service will enable businesses to avail of up to 1Gbps data speeds and the Eastern Health Shared Services (EHSS) is understood to be among the first of several large enterprises to sign up for the service.
Eircom’s metro Ethernet offers large corporations and public sector bodies opportunities for high-speed LAN transfer, data sharing, back-up and outsourcing. EHSS, its first client, is responsible for providing ICT services to the health board offices in the Eastern Regional Health Authority areas of Dublin, Wicklow and Kildare.
Tony Carroll, director of ICT services at EHSS, commented: “After considering its options EHSS chose Eircom’s metro Ethernet. This service now provides a 1GB link between Dr Steeven’s Hospital and Citywest Business Campus, and a 100MB link between Dr Steeven’s Hospital and EHSS’s disaster-recovery site in Santry.”
The organisation’s servers run a number of critical applications, from email and SAP to the accident and emergency systems used by the area board hospitals. When EHSS decided to relocate its servers to an outsourcing partner in Citywest, it knew that the link between there and its Dublin 8 HQ at Dr Steeven’s Hospital would have to guarantee reliability, redundancy and above all speed.
“Because Eircom’s metro Ethernet is offering such high speeds users really will feel as if remote sites are inside their own LAN,” said Cathal Magee, managing director, Eircom Retail.
“Because it’s based on Ethernet standard, it uses the same basic technology to go across the city as companies use now inside their own buildings, which is very convenient because it means companies don’t need any new skills or special resources. Eircom’s metro Ethernet opens up whole new possibilities for real-time LAN transfer, back-up and disaster recovery among commercial and public sector organisations.
“We are planning to extend the availability Eircom metro Ethernet service to Cork later this year and to extend its high-speed connections to include Eircom Business IP+, our next-generation MPLS IP network and to the internet service provider world,” McGee concluded.
By John Kennedy
