Blue Star opts for outsourcing

By ADAM GIFFORD

Blue Star Group has become the first customer outside Telecom for the Safecom outsourced network security service offered by esolutions.

Blue Star chief information officer David Peters said Safecom was being used by Whitcoulls Group and two other Blue Star divisions.

He said that when the company started planning a national data communications network, it decided to outsource. The company wanted a high level of service at an affordable price. By outsourcing, it would not have to develop new skills and support capabilities within its own information services team.

He said Safecom gave the divisions network management, security and regular reports. It was able to monitor staff use of e-mail, the worldwide web and remote access services.

Safecom allows companies to run an extranet through a virtual private network. Secure access to the internet and e-mail is through an internet access gateway which handles things like access control, user authentication and encryption. Safecom connects to the internet through Telecom's NetGate service.

Esolutions brand manager Sue McCarty said Safecom, which was originally developed to meet Telecom's security needs, was an infrastructure solution, as opposed to the applications which made up most of its portfolio. Esolutions is a joint venture between Telecom, Electronic Data Services (EDS) and Microsoft to explore ASP (application service provider) opportunities.

Ms McCarty said esolutions was now actively marketing its portfolio, which includes Microsoft Office 2000 rented over the internet; a payroll system, Datacom NettPay; a service which can convert e-mails to faxes; web hosting and electronic procurement.

She said Safecom was the foundation for the ASP, and explained part of the difference between the rental levels esolutions is setting and what companies would pay if they bought the applications to install themselves: "Software licence fees are only one part of the purchase. The charge for Office encompasses the licence fee and the value-add which comes from Safecom, the help desk and the administration."

She said customers avoided administration costs of having people on site to maintain servers. They didn't have to buy upgrades or upgrade the hardware every time the software was upgraded.

The office and payroll applications were targeted at small and medium- sized businesses.

Running Microsoft Office over the web, which only a few customers have opted for so far, involves use of Citrix Metaframe technology, something which, in the eyes of purists, puts it out of the ASP category.

It is, however, an approach that suits telephone companies, which are in the business of selling bandwidth.

"We've seen availability of broad band access is critical to the success of this," Ms McCarty said.

"You can run it over a telephone line but performance is better if you use Jetstream. It all depends on your needs."