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MCI UNVEILS MANAGED DATA PROTECTION SERVICE

MCI Inc introduced a new fully managed data protection service to help companies strengthen their business continuity efforts. With MCI's new Enhanced Smart Backup, companies hosting with MCI can now more easily and rapidly restore critical company information in the event of anything from simple data loss to major disasters.

MCI's latest addition to its Enterprise Hosting portfolio represents a new alternative to traditional tape-based backup solutions by utilizing cuttingedge, disk-to-disk technology to more efficiently back up and restore data. Enhanced Smart Backup enables enterprises of all sizes to benefit from faster data backup and restoration, improved data integrity, reduced capital costs and increased scalability. MCI customers can also more easily retrieve file or system restores on-demand, since the data is securely stored online.

"MCI is bringing next-generation hosting services to market that deliver greater value for our enterprise customers," said Nancy Gofus, senior vice president of product management for MCI. "MCI's Enhanced Smart Backup helps companies lower their total cost of ownership while tapping into new business continuity capabilities that far surpass traditional backup and restore solutions."

According to Enterprise Strategy Group, corporations leave nearly 30 percent of their critical data unprotected due to lack of time, tools and resources. In addition, 27 percent of apparently successful backups cannot be restored, leaving a significant portion of information assets at risk.

From its monitoring and security systems to backup reporting, MCI Enhanced Smart Backup offers Enterprise Hosting customers end-to-end data protection. MCI provides and manages the bi-coastal infrastructure required, including redundant servers, storage arrays, IP network connectivity, operating systems and backup software. MCI's specially trained and certified technical experts ensure that the solution is continuously up and running and can troubleshoot complex issues should they arise.

One of the key advantages of MCI's new Enhanced Smart Backup is that it only copies unique data changes, eliminating the need to copy an entire data set after the initial scan. This approach greatly reduces the volume of data backed up daily and does not tax server and network computing resources in the process.

With MCI's new disk-to-disk solution, utilizing technology from Avamar, customers can realize significant savings over traditional tape-based methods, especially for variable and dynamic applications such as databases. Unlike traditional offerings that include charges for all incremental and full backups, Enhanced Smart Backup is based on customer usage, determined by the amount of actual data protected.

By outsourcing their critical backup and restore needs along with other application management functions, MCI customers receive one of the highest levels of business continuity protection available, while eliminating the multiple costs associated with building and managing an in-house solution.