Allianz retains Orange Business as global VPN provider

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 06 November 2007 09:04

Your IT - Home IT

Global financial services company, Allianz, has renewed a three-year global IP VPN deal with France Telecom subsidiary Orange Business Services (formally Equant). Orange Business Services will continue to provide an IP VPN linking Allianz subsidiaries in 65 countries and that includes managed firewall and conferencing services. Orange Business Services has been responsible for Allianz's international business network since 1999. '¨In the Asia Pacific region, Orange Business Services will continue to provide these services to Allianz across Australia, China, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.

Orange claims that its IP VPN is the largest in the world. It covers 220 countries and territories and numbered 300,000 worldwide accesses on 1 October 2007. Last month the company launched its IP VPN Protected service worldwide. It enables companies to protect their remote sites from internal and external attack with a firewall and/or an intrusion prevention system for EUR50 per month per option.

Under the firewall option, the client determines the screening rules, which can either be general or specific to one site. The intrusion prevention service inspects inputs and outputs and prevents viruses circulating, such as any virus from the PCs of members of staff remotely connecting to the site.

'¨Allianz SE is one of the world's largest financial service providers with more than 177,000 employees in 700 branches and about 70 million customers worldwide.