If you’re shopping for an Internet provider for your business, the vast quantities of information available can be more of a hindrance than really helpful. With so much “me too” noise out there, how do you pick a supplier who can actually deliver on a promise? Who’s in business for the long term? Who understands the needs of a business geared to Europe as a whole, as well as those with a strong local presence? In true European tradition, perhaps it’s wise to start your search by talking to one of the oldest players.

EUnet has been around since 1982. And while that’s an amazingly small amount of time in the history of European commerce, for an Internet player it’s very, very good! In the years between then and now, what was originally a group founded to unify elect ronic mail systems used by research institutions and universities across Europe has grown into Europe’s leading provider of value-added Internet services. In the process, EUnet has created a network that draws its strength as much from bandwidth and capac ity as presence and competency.

Let’s look at commitment In 1996, Advent, one of the world’s largest private equity investors, led an investment of 10 million ECUs in EUnet International. This has allowed the organisation to focus more aggressively on creating the kind of business that can lead its customers to the kind of success that all the hype about “the Net” has led them to believe. Through mergers and acquisitions and diversification of its services EUnet International is constantly expanding the company’s size and its influence in the marketplace.

Let’s look at infrastructure All kinds of people have theories about how an Internet provider should be set up. Terms like “star clusters”, “redundancy”, “topology” abound - and confuse. At EUnet International, we’re convinced that performance is what it’s all about, and that the rest is “smoke and mirrors”. Here’s an example of what we mean do you care that your car has “double overhead cam”, if it outperforms every other vehicle? No, of course not. For EUnet International, it’s important that we can send your message round trip to various destinations quicker than anyone else; and that you can transfer quantities of data - quickly. That’s performance. Performance is also reliability: how stable is t he route your message or data travels, and how easy is it to connect to other networks. At EUnet International, we’re convinced that we have the equipment in place to provide you with outstanding performance. We’re not the only ones who are convinced.

At the moment, we have about 450,000 customer sites, primarily in Europe. These sites support an estimated two million individual users. National and multi-national companies of all sizes have come to rely on EUnet International’s superior performance. They rely on us not only to transmit messages and data, but also to set up their internal networks, to develop their web presence, to handle commercial transactions, and a host of other related services.

Let’s look at people When we boast about being the most reliable performer, we believe we know what we’re talking about. At our European Network Operations Center in Amsterdam the communication links, traffic flows and network planning are controlled by experts. Not content to staff this 24-hour/7 day operation with technicians, EUnet International employs only those with a university degree in computer science or a related field, and then, at an honours level. This is part of a strategy that attempts at all times to correct problems before they affect our customers. To that end, special network monitoring and control tools have been developed. These specially developed tools also provide us with insights ranging from monthly traffic evaluations and statistics, to every 10 seconds sampled status and traffic patterns f or all core infrastructures. In addition, a rapidly expanding network of local organisations offer support and advice at a country level. Partnering with providers of enabling technologies such as online shopping and web page development enlarges our competency network even further.

Let’s look at what we offer At EUnet International, we prefer talking business to networks, performance to megabytes. In the 15 years that we have been providing Europe with an Internet service, our business has developed to reflect yours. Today, we can provide your business with a number of value-added services that range from mobile access and intranets to security architecture for on-line banking and a complete security architecture based on cryptographic techniques for on-line shopping.

Let’s look at the numbers Although they don’t tell the whole story, we admit there’s a certain comfort in numbers. We’re proud of ours: Projected 1996 revenues EUnet International were 35 million ECUs, a 100% growth over 1995 EUnet International currently has close to 250 employees The EUnet International network consists of 12 subsidiaries and an additional 29 operating companies EUnet International now numbers over 350 PoPs in 42 countries EUnet International’s high-capacity trans-Atlantic links currently total 38 Mbs and is the fastest available 450,000 customer sites serve over 2 million individual users Status and traffic patterns are sampled every 10 seconds at our Network Operations Centre (NOC) in the heart of Amsterdam The NOC operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week Call us!