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Computerworld - Corporate purchases of IP virtual private network services continue to surge forward, a trend that analysts said is being accompanied by a shift away from the use of frame-relay technology to carry network traffic.
IT executives who are rolling out IP VPN connections said last week that the networks provide better security than dial-up systems and many other current approaches. They added that VPNs also can help keep networking costs in check, allowing them to vastly increase bandwidth to handle new applications.
For example, The Stride Rite Corp., a footwear retailer in Lexington, Mass., today will announce plans to deploy an IP VPN connecting 264 stores nationwide. The new network will replace dial-up services with a constant VPN connection at each store and upgrade available bandwidth from 56K to 384Kbit/sec. or more, said Stride Rite CIO Yusef Akyuz.
That will help the retailer accommodate a new point-of-sale system and added applications, Akyuz added.
In another new deal, MCI Inc. last week announced a contract with AMF Bowling Worldwide Inc. in Richmond, Va., to connect 350 bowling alleys via MCI's IP VPN Broadband Service. The VPN setup will replace a satellite communications system that sometimes suffers from slow performance, said Rohana Meade, vice president of IT at AMF.
The deal between AMF and MCI is valued at $1.27 million over three years. Akyuz said the annual cost to Stride Rite for its VPN will be about $400,000 under a two-year contract with Paris-based carrier Equant Inc. and GoRemote Internet Communications Inc., a managed services provider in Milpitas, Calif.
According to both Akyuz and Meade, cost was a major factor in their companies' decisions to choose VPN services.

Stride Rite CIO Yusef Akyuz

AMF looked at connecting its bowling centers via frame relay a year ago, but that would have been "at least twice as expensive" as the IP VPN approach, Meade said.
At Stride Rite, Equant has provided a frame-relay connection to manufacturing sites in China for the past two years, allowing shoe designers in the U.S. to talk with plant managers via videoconference links, Akyuz said. He added that Stride Rite considered various alternatives for connecting its stores, but "at the end of the day, [a VPN] was the best solution."
VPN Advantages
Nearly all the major network service providers are marketing IP VPN offerings as a replacement for frame relay, said Ron Kaplan, an analyst at IDC in Framingham, Mass. Kaplan said VPNs are usually less expensive than frame-relay networks, although the cost differences have narrowed as carriers have lowered