AT&T Inc. has launched AT&T Synaptic Hosting, its next-generation utility computing service with managed networking, security and storage for businesses.

As part of AT&T's $1 billion planned global network investment in 2008, the new utility computing service combines technology acquired from USinternetworking (USi) with five "super IDCs" (Internet data centers) in the United States, Europe and Asia. AT&T has a total of 38 IDCs in its global Internet Protocol (IP) network.

The super IDCs will be located in Piscataway, N.J.; San Diego; Annapolis, Md.; Singapore and Amsterdam and will act as regional gateways to the AT&T network "cloud."

They will support large-scale computing and applications on demand via virtualized servers and deliver services across AT&T's IDC hosting infrastructure. Over time, additional IDCs will be added to the regional network infrastructure to deliver "enterprise-class" cloud capabilities to companies in the U.S. and abroad.

A core feature of AT&T Synaptic Hosting is its utility computing platform. This enables the service to deliver a complete hosting solution with features that use the AT&T network to manage applications, compute resources on servers and store data. AT&T Synaptic Hosting also provides designated account support all backed by a single end-to-end, service-level agreement that is unique within the industry.

The company says with this offer, clients will achieve greater flexibility, improved performance and cost savings. The computing platform enabling Synaptic Hosting will be extended to deliver similar benefits to other services in AT&T's portfolio, including unified communication, content distribution, dynamic backup and restore, on-demand retrieval of high-resolution images such as X-rays and CT scans and many other subscription-based software services.

The official Web site of the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC) is powered by AT&T Synaptic Hosting. Teamusa.org is the USOC's new feature-rich Web site that connects fans of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic teams with America's athletes on their journey to the Olympic Games. The site features stories on U.S. Olympians and Paralympians and Olympic and Paralympic hopefuls, athlete blogs and social networking tools.