Case studies

The project

The National Archives knew its plan to offer people the chance to download UFO files free for one month from its website would attract thousands of extra visitors. But the planned PR campaign around the launch was bound to stoke up even more interest.With its
existing hosting infrastructure limited to 30Mbps, The National Archives realised it would need a lot of extra bandwidth. In the
face of such a large increase in traffic volumes, there was a real danger the website would simply crash, leaving UFO fans around
the world frustrated and disappointed. The National Archives approached NetBenefit in search of a short-term solution that
would give the best possible user experience during the month when the UFO files were available as free downloads.

The solution

NetBenefit was chosen from a range of possible providers because of its experience in creating flexible solutions to fit clients’ business needs. With just a few days to go before the news story broke, the team worked fast to design and put in place a secure, load balanced, single site solution, with firewalls set to active-active for maximum throughput and high availability.

To guarantee an excellent local experience around the world, NetBenefit worked closely with its Content Delivery Network (CDN) partner, Panther Express, to put in place a global CDN service.

The first batch of UFO files released covered alleged alien abductions, flying saucer sightings and crop circle incidents from 1978 to 2002. The PR campaign attracted major TV, radio and press coverage, generating a vast surge of visitors to the website. According to online intelligence service Hitwise Internet, searches for UFOs more than trebled the day the UFO files were released. The National Archives’ UFO page attracted five times as many visits as usual and more than one million files were downloaded in the first four days.

The short-term contract with NetBenefit enabled the website to support the necessary 55Mbps and cope with an astonishing 5 terabytes of data transfer in the first week.

At a glance case study

• Huge peaks in demand handled by Content Delivery Network (CDN) service
• Fast to deploy CDN service meant service was up and running within days
• Over 5 terabytes of data transfer in the first week
• Dedicated NetBenefit account manager
• Professional UK based support, 24x7 

"Without NetBenefit’s infrastructure, we would not have been able to meet the record levels of interest generated by this project. They really helped us deliver the unknown."

David Thomas, Chief Information Officer, The National Archives

The company

Launched in 2003, be the brand experience provides customised, and off-the-shelf, Marketing Resource Management (MRM) solutions that help marketing professionals maintain a consistent and professional brand image.

be the brand experience's solution is based upon a range of modular technologies that automate marketing processes whilst delivering considerable costs savings and efficiencies. Typical uses of the service include communication and control of corporate identity; managing supplier relationships or creative workflows and personalised dashboards to indicate workload status for all members of a geographically dispersed marketing communications team.

The challenge

be the brand experience hosts all of the data intensive files that would usually reside on a client’s servers. Their clients require instant and reliable access to thousands of graphical files around the world, across all time zones.

Even as a start up company, it was clear that be the brand experience would require a robust managed hosting solution. Most importantly, it also needed a hosting partner that could provide a solution that would scale as the business grew.

At a glance case study

• Always on managed hosting platform for global access to business critical services
• Dual-site failover design with database, imaging and web servers
• High availability FortiGate firewalls for unified threat management
• 24x7 professional support
• Dedicated managed hosting account manager

"NetBenefit’s ability to provide dual-site resilience was the most compelling selling point for us. For be the brand experience it is our guarantee that customers will have access to content anywhere, anytime."

Guy Hainsworth, Chief Technical Officer, be the brand experience.

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The company

A record number of people now shop online in the UK buying everything from books and DVDs to weekly groceries, spending in excess of £9 billion in 2006 according to the British Retail Consortium. Shopsafe,
www.shopsafe.co.uk, is a comprehensive guide to online shopping set up to provide advice to this growing consumer group about how to make informed buying decisions and shop safely online.

Shopsafe checks the security, delivery, range of goods and prices of online shops, as well as reporting on special offers and gift ideas. Amazon was its first listing back in 1996 and Shopsafe now reviews over 3500 sites and receives 200,000 unique visitors
every month looking for guidance about online ordering and security of credit card payment transactions as well as top tips on the latest online bargains.

The challenge

As the starting point for thousands of online shopping trips it is essential that Shopsafe’s website is readily available. It needs to
work first time, every time in order to act as an effective reference site. Shoppers also want fast access to the latest information on
new online deals so speed is a key concern when it comes to running the website.

At a glance case study

• Linux based hosting platform
• Remote monitoring services for DNS, specific web pages and http port
• PLESK control panel to simplify management and cost of website administration
• 24x7 support

NetBenefit really understands our business needs and how central hosting is to our success.  Its support is key. 

Simon Crisp, director, Shopsafe

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The company

Konica Minolta Printing Solutions Europe B.V. is a leading developer, manufacturer and supplier of document printing solutions. Its printers, and associated supplies and accessories can be found in offices and homes throughout Europe and are used in electronic publishing,graphics, design and advanced imaging. It distributes its products through a broad network of e-commerce, retail,reseller and distribution partners all over Europe, Middle East and Africa.

The challenge

At the heart of Konica Minolta’s operations is its corporate website providing information on products, programmes and promotions to both customers and dealers. It receives over 100,000 visitors a week with a wide range of interests, from dealer sites to programme microsites. In addition to the main corporate website, the company runs numerous microsites to deal with a broad spectrum of online activity across multiple geographies. These can vary enormously but will include campaign or programme based content. With marketing activities increasingly moving online, Konica Minolta needs to ensure its website is highly accessible and can cope with peaks in traffic as new promotions and campaigns are launched. To meet these demands Konica needed a managed hosting provider with a highly available infrastructure in place.

 

At a glance case study detail

• Essential online information for Konica Minolta's partners and customers across EMEA
• 20 domains with over 100,000 visitors per week
• Linux based hosting platform
• Servers located in two different datacentres to provide dual-site redundancy
• Dedicated NetBenefit account manager
• 24x7 support

"We've worked together for five years and been consistently impressed with the level of service we have received."

Jean-François Perron, Online Marketing Manager, EMEA, Konica Minolta

 

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The company

Launched in 1913, the New Statesman has provided independent high-level editorial content about the social, economic and political world for close to a century. In 1998 the well-established print edition was supplemented with an online version of the publication. This new service offered digital content and gave readers around the world the chance to debate issues raised in the publication through vote and comment facilities.  

The challenge

To ensure that the New Statesman maintained its leading position, a decision was made to re-brand both the print edition and online presence. The redesigned print version of the publication was launched in June 2006 giving readers more content with additional in-depth analysis and distinctive graphics. In November of the same year the website was brought in line with the print edition. 

The publication wanted to harness the potential of the Internet but also to ensure that the site was resilient and robust to support the growing amount of traffic and new services it would be providing. With such a high profile brand, the site could not afford to suffer any downtime.  The New Statesman, therefore, decided to outsource its hosting to an expert. In July 2006 the publication went out to tender for a hosting provider.

At a glance case study detail

• Linux based hosting platform
• FortiGate firewall for increased anti virus and intrusion protection
• Daily back up service
• Remote server monitoring services
• 24x7 support
• Domain name services

"NetBenefit really understands the aims and vision of our publication and what we are looking to achieve from the website.  They guaranteed exceptional support and are living up to their word."

Daniel Coppock, web developer, New Statesman 

 

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The Liberal Democrats are Britain's third largest political party. Like most modern political parties they use the Internet as a major channel for communicating with their millions of members and supporters across the UK and internationally.

Their website, located at www.libdems.org.uk, provides background information on the party's policies and people as well as news and views on current topical issues. A password-protected extranet site is provided for party staff and volunteers and currently holds over 4GB of downloadable information.

The Liberal Democrats require large amounts of storage space for their website and a high level of security, so they have opted to use dedicated servers. NetBenefit has worked with them to implement a flexible solution that involves two dedicated Windows 2000 servers. One is used as a web server to host the front-end website data and the other is used to power the back-end Microsoft SQL database. They also use NetBenefit's Security Management service to outsource some of the day-to-day management of the servers and focus their internal resources on more important development issues.

The Liberal Democrats chose to host with NetBenefit for the following reasons:

• NetBenefit's track record of successfully providing similar services to other customers
• Responsive and informed technical support
• Flexible dedicated server solutions
• Ability to outsource security management whilst retaining their ability to access the servers to maintain their software and data
• Highly reliable network infrastructure
• Dedicated account manager for one point of contact and good integration between account managers and technical support staff

"The www.libdems.org.uk website is a vital source of information for the public, party members and volunteers. For this reason we need a reliable hosting solution with fast connection speeds and guaranteed uptime. By using the NetBenefit dedicated server solution, we receive maximum flexibility and maximum security. We also take advantage of their technical experts to help customise the solution to our specific requirements."

Mark Pack, Communications and Internet Officer
Liberal Democrats