TotalTravel.com set for global expansion with help from Macquarie Hosting

Managed Hosting service ensures powerful performance and high availability for Australian e-travel business
 

Sydney, Australia – 31 October, 2006 – Online travel directory TotalTravel.com today announced it will relocate the hosting of its mission-critical website from Singapore to Sydney to support rapid growth in new international markets. The move is expected to save TotalTravel.com money while increasing scalability, reliability, security and revenue opportunities.

TotalTravel.com has signed a three-year deal with Macquarie Hosting, a division of Macquarie Telecom for managed hosting and security services for its family of travel sites in Australia, the United Kingdom and New Zealand. The solution will be hosted at Macquarie Hosting’s purpose-built data centre in Sydney, the Intellicentre.

Macquarie Hosting won the contract in a competitive tender based on exceptional customer service, cost and its ability to provide a flexible, secure and highly available solution.

“Outsourcing our hosting needs frees our technical staff to focus on developing products and functionality that will grow our revenue. We need to focus on our core business – now we can,” said TotalTravel.com Chief Operating Officer, Esther Pearson.

With more than 1.9 million unique visitors per month, and growing, TotalTravel.com has nearly half a million listings for destinations and travel services in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, and is soon to launch in additional markets. The site allows users to book flights, accommodation and tours directly with suppliers.

Additional to its primary online business, TotalTravel.com also builds and hosts web sites for more than 1,000 travel providers.

To support its customers and website development business, TotalTravel.com needed monitored 24/7 availability and support services for its website.

“Our 7,000 paid advertisers in Australia must be able to change and update their site listings at any time and we need to ensure a seamless experience for consumers,” explained Pearson. “We needed to make sure that a huge increase in demand from new markets didn’t adversely affect the service levels we deliver to our existing customers.”

Backed by third-party certifications such as AS/NZS 7799 and DSD Gateway, Macquarie Hosting’s Intellicentre offers TotalTravel.com and its customers the assurance of a fully redundant hosting environment. The workload is automatically distributed over multiple servers to ensure reliable, continuous operation at all times.

Greg Thomson, Macquarie Telecom’s Group Executive, Hosting and Security, commented: “We see many start-up businesses explore offshore hosting options due to perceived cost efficiencies. Managed Hosting services, which guarantee 24/7 support and availability, often work out to be more cost effective than offshore options which don’t provide comparable levels of service.”

Seamless transition

TotalTravel.com used Macquarie Hosting consultants based in Singapore to help manage the migration from its current supplier.

“Macquarie Hosting had people on the ground in Singapore to manage the transition,” said Pearson. “Additionally, its engineers made recommendations for fine tuning the system before the move. This was a tremendous value-add.”

Under the agreement, Macquarie Hosting will provide:

• 24/7 managed hosting services with SAN architecture
• Redundant firewalls for high availability
• Secure network protection with active monitoring and intrusion detection
• Managed backup services

Bandwidth and data can also be rapidly scaled to meet TotalTravel.com’s requirements

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For more information::
Mandy Galmes
N2N Communications
02 9213 2302
agalmes@n2n.com.au

About Macquarie Hosting
Macquarie Hosting is a division of Macquarie Telecom, a leading supplier of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) solutions – including voice, data, mobile and hosting – specialising in the business and government markets. Its dedicated managed hosting and security facility, the Intellicentre, is certified to BS 7799 and DSD Gateway security standards.

Macquarie Telecom provides services to 3000 business and government customers in Australia and Asia, supporting more than one million business users at work every day. Founded in July 1992, it is one of Australasia’s first deregulated telecommunications companies. It expanded its operation into Asia in 2000, and holds carrier licenses in Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong.