Equant fired up by $3.5m IP VPN win

France Telecom unit Equant has won a contract to supply global virtual private network (VPN) services to Kidde, a fire protection company.

Kidde, known for its fire extinguishers, has a new data centre at its UK headquarters in Colnbrook that will connect to 83 sites in 28 countries with VPNs using the Internet Protocol (IP) standard.

The data centre handles customer details, email and billing. The IP VPN will be critical as the user rolls out PeopleSoft enterprise software globally, connected back to the data centre.

Kidde needs its staff to make such connections securely and with a guaranteed level of service, something that Equant says it can control.

IP VPNs are becoming an increasingly common way of connecting branches and remote workers to corporate hubs.

The contract is a good one for Amsterdam-based Equant, coming as it does in pounds sterling from a UK company, because its results have been affected this year by the strengthening of the euro against most other currencies.

It expects to post revenue figures of between $1.41bn and $1.43bn for the first half of 2004, according to a recent statement.