UK-based entertainment ticketing group Seatem has been selected to provide the ticketing platform for the Queensland Performing Arts Centre, and Seatem has in turn signed a $A1.5 million deal under which Macquarie Telecom will host the company's ENTA white-label ticketing application in Australia.
ENTA is used by more London organisations than any other ticketing system. Users include the Prince of Wales Theatre, the Drury Lane Theatre, the London Palladium, Sadler's Wells, Tate Modern, and Tate Britain.
Seatem's US clients include the NBA, NFL, and New York theatre companies.
In Australia, the system is also used by the Sydney Theatre Company.
The system supports ticket sales through other participants either via Seatem servers or through TicketSwitch (a Seatem group company) to resellers including HNV, Waterstone's, and British Airways.
The deal with Macquarie Hosting will enable Seatem to further expand its customer base locally to include other leading Australian entertainment organisations.
"Our ticketing software can handle up to 6.5 million simultaneous transactions. We needed a server hosting solution that was equally scalable and equipped to provide a reliable 24/7 service for our customers," said John Godwin, Seatem's managing director for Australasia.
"We chose Macquarie Hosting for its proven experience working with online transaction based businesses as well as its specialisation in the design and implementation of complex managed hosting environments. This partnership gives us the confidence we need to guarantee our customers low latency, fully redundant services, regardless of how quickly we, or they, grow," he added.
In today’s world, every business is on the World Wide Web. You just can’t compete without a website. But in order to be on the Internet, you need a hosting company. Not just a hosting company, as you will soon discover, but a top-notch hosting company which can help you take your business to the next level. This becomes more challenging than one would think. Since new hosting companies are appearing on the scene all the time, it is hard to know exactly which ones to trust or simply which ones are skilled at what they do. How can you choose the best managed hosting company for you needs? Let’s talk about some of the best ways to choose the best possible hosting provider.
Turn to Google.com and the Web. You already know that “everything” is on the Web, so get out there and see what you can find out about the company you are considering. Google.com is obviously the most popular search engine to turn to when you are doing research but there are many others such as Ask.com. Put in their company name, top executives’ names and other pertinent information. See what information appears about them. Ask questions if any questionable links arise and see what type of answers you receive.
It’s not just about the “bottom line” when choosing managed hosting. Many companies or entrepreneurs are tempted by low rates when they choose managed hosting, only to discover low or non-existent customer service or a strange contract that they have “agreed” to by signing up for the service. Be careful if that deal seems a little too sweet – take the time to read the fine print because usually, there is a reason why it’s small.
Take the tour of the site and judge its performance. Have a critical eye on a new hosting company’s website when visiting. Is their website updated and current? Do they have lots of typos or other careless mistakes? Are links broken? Does the graphic design look like a cheap template? These are all signs of someone who isn’t doing their best work – or of someone who is just starting out. Let them make their mistakes on someone else’s hosting. Not yours!
Do they have an About Us page? A proud company – any company – will want to tell you more about it. The new hosting company ideally should have an About Us page and even a Staff page so you can learn exactly by whom and how your hosting will be managed. This can give you a sense of how many programmers, customer service staff, executives and other staff people the new hosting company employs. Even the existence of a Staff page helps you determine their size and professionalism. The company that won’t tell you anything about its history could have very well been started last Thursday by someone fresh out of college (hey, we have nothing against a recent grad). We’re not critical of anything you put on your About Us page – it’s simply important that it gives a potential client a chance to learn who you are before doing business with you.
Consider 6-12 hours appropriate. With most new hosting companies, 6 to 12 hours will be considered an appropriate time for a response from Customer Service or an Executive with the company. If you don’t receive a response within that time, ask yourself if you are somehow sending your message during a holiday, weekend or other off hours without realizing it. The new hosting company that doesn’t get back to you within 24 hours is a cause for concern. They are either too busy or badly organized and neither is a good sign for someone who wants to do business with them.
Look for multiple contact methods. Consider it a “red flag” if you can only contact the company via email or even more so, only through one email address. This is often a sign of a one-person hosting company or a very new company not really ready to handle your business. Or if they are a larger company, it can also be a sign that they don’t want to actually help or communicate with their customers. Before doing business with your new hosting company, be sure they offer you a telephone number and several email addresses. These contact methods will help you connect with someone – should you ever have a need to do so.
New doesn’t mean “bad”. There’s nothing wrong with being new, small, starting out or anything like that. There are hundreds of new hosting companies that are excellent and ideal to do business with. The key is learning which ones are best to do business with and which ones you need to avoid. Someone who is passionate enough to start their own business is often dedicated, enthusiastic and willing to work the hard hours to make it work. Sometimes, choosing the best new hosting company is simply “good horse sense” and trusting what your gut tells you – do you have a good feeling about this? Listen to that feeling.
TX, Sep 22, 2009 - Though there is no scarcity for the web hosting service providers, most of the web hosting services out there are very common. Obviously, it will be a hard time to choose the best web hosting service provider for your needs. However, with the availability of the very best web hosting service providers such as Bounceweb,who offer solutions with cutting edge technologies, the choices can be made simple. All you have to do is to go with the best and ignore the rest.
This is the factor that has made bounceweb the #1 web hosting service provider of this planet. “Web hosting is everywhere. There are people who wonder who we manage the competition prevailing among the web hosting service providers. For the moment of truth, we are not facing any heat from the other web hosting service providers out there. In fact, they are nowhere near our latest technologies used in web hosting. Our clients realize that only we can provide the most advanced web hosting solutions at simply incomparable rates” says Mr. Joey Smith of bounceweb.com
Speaking about the eco-friendly web hosting solutions available at bounceweb, Mr. Joey Smith said, “Though we ride with the wind of technological advancements in web hosting, we make sure that our modern technology doesn’t affect the planet which we live. We are adopting Green Web Hosting no matter what technological advancements we make. Green Web Hosting is nothing but make use of the renewable energy sources such as wind power and solar power to run our servers. Our Green Web Hosting has received international appreciation and it makes us happy to see that many other service providers have started to implement Green Web Hosting upon seeing us.”
Speaking on the move, Mr. Joey Smith said, “We have implemented all the latest web hosting technologies. We also offer the most advanced Ruby on Rails Hosting and the much needed Joomla Hosting. We are aware that these web hosting technologies such as Ruby on Rails Hosting is available with many service providers. What makes us special is our pricing. The green web hosting solutions that we provide are at the cheapest possible rates. And that’s one of many other qualities that make us the best web hosting solution provider.”
TMW Systems, the largest developer and integrator of transportation management software for the trucking industry, today announced the launch of TMW Managed Services, a new service offering designed to help companies in transportation services to reduce IT infrastructure investments, ensure scalability and optimize scarce resources. TMW Managed Services offers enterprise-class application hosting and systems management to reduce the complexity of software implementations and project startups, improve application availability, reliability and scalability, and lower the capital cost of major software implementations.
As a leading software development and solutions delivery company, TMW Systems already deploys comprehensive hosting services to fully manage back-end and customer facing operations for many of its software customers in industries such as freight transportation, waste and municipal fleets. Today’s announcement formalizes those services for marketing and sales purposes.
“Transportation service providers are re-examining core competencies and looking for ways to further reduce information technology costs in already lean organizations, while maintaining their competitiveness,” said Scott Vanselous, vice president and general manager at TMW. “TMW Managed Services provides enterprise-class application hosting and management services at an affordable monthly fee.” Vanselous stated that with TMW’s fully managed hosting services, the total costs are both more visible and more manageable through clearly-defined service arrangements.
Managed services are ideal for organizations that want to deploy new applications quickly, without managing the hurdles of hardware procurement, infrastructure upgrades, or IT staff expansion, all while aligning with corporate IT department policies. They can also provide business continuity assurance and co-location capabilities.
“One advantage of working with TMW Managed Services is access to our unmatched transportation services industry knowledge. Our engineers are highly certified and experienced and our consulting services can align with corporate IT policies and growth expectations,” Vanselous said. “We offer a very cost-effective alternative to maintaining mission-critical software applications with in-house IT resources.” he added.
Hosted Solutions, the East Coast's premier provider of IT infrastructure as a service (IaaS), announced today its selection as a "Top 10" Best Managed Hosting Service by the editors of HostReview.com.
"We have included Hosted Solutions in our Top 10 list because of both recent developments at the company and its well-earned reputation for quality," said Darren Tabor, editor of HostReview.com. "Our staff closely monitors a variety of factors to determine the companies that we will recommend to our readers. The Top 10 Web Hosting Awards are based on the overall product offering, value, customer service and users' reviews of the selected companies," he added. Tabor noted that Hosted Solutions has previously been awarded several Top 10 awards over the past several years as a leader in hosted services, most recently in February of this year.
In the last several months, Hosted Solutions has taken a number of bold steps, solidifying its leadership position in the industry. Last week, the company introduced its applications hosting offering, including support for a specific range of leading business applications, including Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, WebSphere, WebLogic and JBoss. One leading industry analyst called it "management of the middleware, providing a service layer for its customers' application layer for middleware that can otherwise become expensive to manage in house."
Earlier this summer, Hosted Solutions introduced the Stratus Trusted Cloud(TM), a robust, enterprise-class cloud solution that dramatically improves the efficiency and availability of IT resources and applications for small- and mid-sized enterprises that might normally not be able to afford the costs associated with such high-end infrastructures. Stratus is designed to provide an added level of assurance to companies that their data and entire infrastructure is being administered in a trusted manner, acting in accordance with a full range of governance, risk management and compliance (GRC) regulations.
"We are honored by the recognition from HostReview.com," said Rich Lee, Hosted Solutions' Chief Executive Officer. "It ratifies the emphasis that we have placed on meeting the needs of our customers, whether it means customizing a plan that satisfies specific requirements, delivering 100 percent uptime to companies that entrust their production environments to us, or being available to answer their questions at any moment, day or night. Hundreds of firms place their trust in us; the HostReview.com award is a clear indication that it's trust well placed."
This is the latest in a long list of awards that Hosted Solutions has received. The company is the recipient of five consecutive "Fast 50" awards from the Triangle Business Journal. It has also been named to the Inc. Magazine "Inc. 5000" list for three years in a row (2007, 2008 and 2009). In addition, the company's Chief Executive Officer, Rich Lee, has been honored as an "Impact Entrepreneur" and named "Business Leader of the Year" by Business Leader Magazine. Lee was also named Ernst & Young "Entrepreneur of the Year" for the Carolinas earlier this year.
Coreworx is used globally by energy industry leaders to manage major capital project execution risk. Coreworx Project Information Control software is used for managing complex engineering documentation and information exchange amongst design professionals, external engineering firms and contractors.
"Coreworx is already known as the leading software used by Owner/Operators, EPCs and Contractors for managing some of the world's largest capital projects and this new offering will provide an attractive option that places less load on the existing budget constrained IT resources," said Ray Simonson, CEO of Coreworx Inc. "We were first approached with this request by our recently signed Calgary based energy and energy related customer in response to their tight deployment timeframe." Ray went on to explain that, "with this solution a customer can more quickly deploy and begin taking advantage of the benefits of the Coreworx solution and the best practices we can provide."
Included in this new offering, Coreworx provides the customer with both the hosting of the application software and the daily Project Information Manager services all at a very affordable cost.
"This is what we do at Acorn Energy to create shareholder and customer value," said John Moore, CEO of Acorn Energy. "We buy businesses that have proven scaled solutions that address a big problem in the energy industry and then we invest to make the solutions painless for new customers to adopt. The hosted and managed services option is perfect for the vast majority of Coreworx potential customers who do not have the IT resources of our early adopter huge reference customers like Chevron or Fluor. The hosted option is as significant to our investment and our customers as when Comverge added the VPC option to its offering allowing utilities to buy capacity instead of load switches."
Macquarie Hosting, a division of Macquarie Telecom, has announced it successfully designed and delivered a high availability, fully redundant hosting solution for T-bone, a leading independent web development agency.
T-bone entered the partnership with Macquarie Hosting for its mission critical online application hosting and business tools for clients including Toyota Motor Corporation Australia, Oporto, Tyrrell's Wines and Barbeques Galore.
I realised from day one that a fully redundant, reliable hosting solution was a must for the business. As T-bone grew, we became increasingly aware that the managed service we had in place was not meeting our requirements.
Our customers rely on us to think beyond the end-user environment that we are creating. This means that T-bone is fully accountable for the back-end infrastructure underpinning their services. Through our partnership with Macquarie Hosting, we ensure that it fits so seamlessly with their business that they can afford to forget about it.
Macquarie Hosting is our most important supplier so it is critical that we work in true partnership. My team relies on Macquarie Hosting for proactive technical strategies that will meet our evolving business requirements.
Macquarie Hosting has delivered a combination of Sun Microsystems servers connected to its managed storage area network to deliver the redundancy, guaranteed scalability and availability that T-bone requires to service its customers. The dedicated servers are housed in Macquarie Hosting's ISO 27001 and DSD Certified data center, the Intellicentre.
T-bone selected Macquarie Hosting for its proven experience in dedicated web hosting for web 2.0 companies and its ability to provide 24/7, secure availability of mission critical applications. The personal accountable service and proactivity that the Macquarie Hosting team demonstrated in working with T-bone were critical factors.
Tony Hindle, Managing Director of T-bone Productions said, "I realised from day one that a fully redundant, reliable hosting solution was a must for the business. As T-bone grew, we became increasingly aware that the managed service we had in place was not meeting our requirements."
Macquarie Hosting worked closely with the team at T-bone to design and implement the technical specifications, spanning the firewall, network, load balancing and dedicated server hosting infrastructures that T-bone required. In addition, Macquarie Hosting was selected as it demonstrated a clear understanding of T-bone's business objectives and responsiveness to proactively manage its hosting services.
The solution from Macquarie Hosting gives T-bone the scalability it requires to increase server capacity to cope with peaks in traffic across its clients' websites and mission critical applications while maintaining the low latency and the secure online experience its customers have come to expect.
Tony said, "Our customers rely on us to think beyond the end-user environment that we are creating. This means that T-bone is fully accountable for the back-end infrastructure underpinning their services. Through our partnership with Macquarie Hosting, we ensure that it fits so seamlessly with their business that they can afford to forget about it."
