As part of its multiyear effort to attract E-business, Sprint Corp. today disclosed the merger of its Enterprise Network Services and Internet Services units into a new unit, Sprint e-Solutions. The shuffle will give customers a single point of contact for everything from network access to hosting to application management and systems integration, according to the company.

To date, customers have had to deal with one salesperson for Internet Services and another for Enterprise Network Services, says Keith Paglusch, president of e-Solutions. Customers also are expected to benefit from better and broader use of Enterprise Network Services' professional-services group. "This will present us with a significant opportunity to bundle services," Paglusch says.

Sprint plans to spend $2 billion next year on its E-business efforts, which include services such as network management, security, transport, and virtual private networking. Sprint is also spending on ways to integrate ordering, trouble ticketing, and consolidate bills for various services. The new unit's sales staff will be boosted from 110 to more than 200 by summer, Paglusch says.

Customers looking to add wireless services to their E-business mix are in luck as e-Solutions will work with Sprint's PCS digital wireless unit, which has partners in the wireless-app and content-provision arenas.

"Companies want more than just Web hosting in their E-commerce projects--they want to use a set of network applications that keeps on expanding," says Andrew Bartels, an E-commerce analyst with consulting firm Giga Information Group. As for whether companies want to buy from one provider or many, that's hard to say. "The answer to both is yes."