Macquarie Hosting turns up the speed for Haymarket Media’s online content delivery

Secure Managed Hosting service gives Haymarket Media infinite scope for growth in competitive online publishing market

Sydney, Australia – 6 November, 2006 – Macquarie Hosting today announced it is delivering Haymarket Media secure managed hosting services, enabling the publisher to continue the rapid growth of its online titles.

Macquarie Hosting won the three year contract from Haymarket Media’s incumbent provider as it was able to deliver a tailored solution that scaled to meet Haymarket’s current and future online content plans. The contract covers a complex managed dedicated hosting solution, web servers, dedicated firewall and security services and 24/7 support.

The Haymarket Group publishes titles from medical to media through to motoring, sport and IT. The company has a strong heritage in technology publishing in Australia, with an extensive portfolio of IT print publications including CRN, Atomic MPC and PC Authority as well key business to business sites, iTnews.com.au, CRN.com.au, and SCmagazine.com.au.

“Haymarket is experiencing rapid growth in the online publishing area, and it was important for us to select a partner who understood the specific nature of our business and who was willing to be flexible to meet our requirements,” said Jeremy Vaughan, Managing Director at Haymarket Media.

“Haymarket’s online audience and page impressions have grown by 100 per cent since the end of 2005, and we expect to achieve similar growth throughout 2007.” said Vaughan.

“We plan to accelerate this growth with the launch of a number of significant online initiatives and scalability is critical to this. With Macquarie Hosting we can access additional hosting capacity for new online publications or to help us manage increased information flows during major news events,” said Vaughan.

According to Rhys Williams, Publisher Digital Media at Haymarket Media, “Our audience is extremely tech savvy and expects to read the latest industry news, features, reviews and opinions as soon as stories break in Australia or overseas. To stay ahead of our competition we need to deliver content immediately and without fail. Macquarie Hosting’s infrastructure gives us increased access speeds and ensures 24/7 availability.”

Macquarie Hosting delivers Haymarket Media:
 

• Clustered, managed database servers running SQL 2005 to provide redundancy and greater capacity
• Managed dedicated firewalls for security and high availability
• 24/7 monitoring and management of all equipment, including ongoing patching of the operating and security systems
• Load-balanced web servers for fast, reliable dynamic web pages
• SAN storage for streaming services such as podcasting and videocasting.

The solution is hosted at Macquarie Hosting’s data centre, the Intellicentre, which is designed to meet AS/NZS 7799 and DSD Gateway standards.

Macquarie Telecom also provides Haymarket Media with data connectivity services via its Metro Access Network - or MAN - a business-grade, intelligent IP access network that has helped to improve the data rates, performance and security of Haymarket’s network. Macquarie Telecom has also helped reduce Haymarket’s telecommunications costs via its fixed line Voice Service.

Macquarie Hosting’s expertise helps Haymarket focus on growth opportunities

According to Williams, “Haymarket’s skills are in publishing and software development. Our IT team doesn’t need to be super strong when it comes to hardware specifications or infrastructure.”

“Macquarie Hosting understood where their strengths were, where our business was heading and created a hosting solution that played to that,” he said.

“Now we have the best of worlds: Macquarie Hosting manages everything right up to the operating system, as well as some of our applications. We are able to pick up the phone to their team of experienced engineers – at any time of the day – and make immediate changes to system specifications.

“Macquarie Hosting’s broad services offering has allowed Haymarket to focus on core services, such as managing the applications and content. Macquarie Hosting manages all other elements essential to delivering a high-availability, scalable platform including database management services,” said Williams.

Greg Thomson, Macquarie Telecom’s Group Executive, Hosting and Security said, “We are seeing some really significant changes take place in the media landscape as publishers and advertisers realise the value of the Internet. With more content and services available online, there is increased demand for high-speed, secure technology to underpin the delivery of information, 24/7.”

“Macquarie Hosting offers advantages around infrastructure, service levels and accreditations that met these requirements,” said Thomson.

###

< Back to previous page

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.