Game player research

New research from ICM Research into the profile of gamers in the UK has revealed some fascinating insights, including:

• Women are as likely as men to be into gaming (66% of men, 65% of women)
• 2 in 3 Facebook gamers are women, with 50% of them between 25 and 45
• 15% of people in the UK regularly play Facebook games like Cityville & Words with Friends – and 45% of those play every day, often for up to three hours at a time
• Under 45s of both genders tend to play games to pass the time
• Over 45s, particularly women, are more likely to play games to keep mentally fit
• Contrary to popular general perception, online gambling is least popular among older women

ICM’s online survey of 10,000 adults was supported with in-depth qualitative interviews with women over 45, a group recently identified in a government report from the National Centre for Social Research as one which has seen a surge in gambling. These interviews revealed:

• For older women, the social element of online gaming is really important – they go online to interact with current friends and to make new ones. While the games draw them in, they tend to make repeat visits to chat, socialize or interact with younger family members
• They are open to brand tie-ins and sponsored free games as long as commercial information is integral to the game and doesn’t interrupt them
• They worry about damaging their computers and prefer games they don’t have to download
• They prefer free games as they are concerned about getting carried away and spending too much
• Older women are gaming as an alternative to standard entertainment such as TV and puzzle books

Research Director Emily Hunt explained: “Our original focus was on female gamers but the data revealed some interesting new insights into the gaming community as a whole. Qualitatively we learned that there is a general desire to keep active through gaming with most people tending to prefer quick and easy games as opposed to longer, more mission-based games.”

The most significant highlights of the research include:
• Women are as likely as men to play on a console but for women this is driven by the Wii and DS or 3DS, whereas men prefer the Xbox 360, Kinect and PS3.
• Apps are driven by age not gender, being equally popular with younger men and women (23% of men, 25% of women under 45) but less so with older people with only 5% of over 45s expressing an interest.
• Facebook games are driven by both age and gender, with younger women being the most enthusiastic players (17% of young men, 26% of young women, 6% of older men, 13% of older women)
• All four main groups are equally likely to play games every day, but men under 45 are much more likely than any other group to be playing every couple of days.
• Under 45s of both gender are more likely to play games to pass the time (73% of men, 74% of women) but over 45s – particularly women – tend to play games to keep mentally fit (50% of women, 40% of men)
• While gaming to keep physically fit is driven by women, this is higher among the younger age groups (13% of young men, 11% of older men, 26% of young women, 21% of older women).

Emily Hunt added: “With the growing emphasis on social and digital media, this research has several implications for the marketing and media industries. Overall, it is clear that gaming is equally popular with both genders – so marketers need to take that into account when launching products and planning campaigns, while remaining conscious of the discrete motivations and preferences of different user groups.”

Will your business cope with network traffic load during the Olympics? Intergence offers five tips for protecting mission critical applications

With London 2012 just over six months away the preparation and excitement for these Olympic Games continues to grow.

With an anticipated one million people descending on London to enjoy 26 different sports, the increase in network traffic will put a huge strain on business critical applications according to Dr Steven Turner (PICTURED), VP of IT Optimisation at Intergence,a leading independent IT optimisation consultancy.

Dr Turner explains, “The pressure on the UK’s telecoms infrastructure and company’s network traffic load during London 2012 will be unprecedented. Although the Games are still six months away, it’s important that businesses start to plan ahead to avoid unexpected service outages.

“There will be employees who wish to watch certain events or indeed the entire sports event. Depending on how these employees’ wishes fit in with corporate policy and IT security configuration, for example which websites are accessible, will dictate how much extra load can be placed on the network. There are a number of ways employees may keep track of the events, most likely in streaming video through sites such as iPlayer but there is also streaming audio, text-based updates and social media.”

He continued, “If a significant event occurs, employees may visit video sharing sites such as YouTube to replay the event and share amongst their colleagues. Unless your business concerns following sporting events (e.g. online betting, news etc), you will no doubt wish to limit the impact this additional traffic has on the network.”

In order to help companies protect their business critical applications whilst also giving employees the freedom to enjoy the 2012 Olympic Games, Intergence has compiled five top tips for protecting and prioritising traffic whilst still giving users the freedom to watch the games if there is capacity.

Intergence’s top tips:

1. Identify your network traffic load and the causes of poor performance
Through application performance monitoring devices including Visual Networks, SolarWinds and Ipanema, business can not only identify network load but also the causes of the load and if a particular user or application is congesting the network. IT staff can use this equipment to identify how its company’s business critical traffic is performing with a view to knowing how then to protect and prioritise it from non-critical traffic.

2. Protect your business critical traffic from non-critical traffic
Achieving this requires intelligent traffic shaping devices such as those from Ipanema. These can monitor the quality of your applications and via a set of criticality rules and quality of service goals, business can ensure that critical sensitive traffic such as Voice, Citrix and internal web-based applications are given the service quality they require. Non critical traffic such as streaming video can be allowed should there be sufficient network capacity.

3. Use WAN Acceleration devices capable of stream splitting
It is highly likely that more than one user at an office location will be streaming the same live video. This is where WAN acceleration devices such as those from Riverbed and Bluecoat can be used to proxy the video streaming so that only a single stream is requested across the WAN link and relayed to the local requesting hosts. This is in contrast to a non-optimised environment where each host receives the same video stream via the WAN, adding much more traffic to the network.

4. Take advantage of multiple WAN links
If there are multiple links including a private MPLS link and Internet link, consider directing your business critical traffic via the MPLS circuit whilst using the cheaper but less reliable Internet link for browsing and video streaming traffic. That way, business applications do not compete with users attempting to stream HD video content or browse websites.

5. Provide a common room with a large TV screen for employees to gather
This will make the whole event more sociable and by using a freeview box to receive the TV over the air you are eliminating any load on the network. Please note productivity may suffer if this is accessible all day!

FACTFILE:
Intergence (www.intergence.com) is a leading independent IT Optimisation Consultancy, headquartered in Cambridge, UK, with a regional office in the Middle East (Dubai, UAE) and was founded in 2003 to address the growing requirements of clients demanding high-level impartial expertise in networks and IT. Our close relationship within the Cambridge academic community enables us to innovate in partnership, rapidly incorporating the latest technology advances into our products and services.

Intergence operates over two distinct lines of business; people and performance. Our expertise and knowledge within the field allows us to resource the right people in the right place, getting your IT projects completed quickly and hassle free. Utilising world first products and professional optimisation services, Intergence has a clear and common purpose- to improve performance and extract more value from your IT infrastructure.

Follow Intergence on Twitter

Watch out, Hollywood is trying to steal YOUR Internet!

Whilst That's Technology has decided to continue publication (we want to being you technology news, not be a part of the story!) That's Technology and our sister online publications DO offer our support to those websites who have decided to participate in the Internet Blackout.

For information on why this is happening and what you can do, please visit this link https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/SOPA/Blackoutpage

Tekdata brings feature rich, family friendly Netgenie router to the UK

Tekdata Distribution Ltd, one of the UK's leading IT distributors of security solutions services, today announced a new strategic partnership that will bring the Cyberoam NetGenie product range to the UK channel.

Ken Hulme, Managing Director at Tekdata said, “We are delighted to add Cyberoam’s NetGenie HOME and SOHO routers to our extensive range of security offerings. Their addition to our portfolio will enable us to deliver UTM security to the small office, home office and consumer markets.”

He added, “The features of the NetGenie HOME router including in built anti-virus, age-appropriate content filtering, time controls, preset secure WiFi and ease of use make it the perfect solution for parents looking to control their children’s internet access with the minimum of effort and technical knowhow.”

Speaking about Cyberoam NetGenie, the latest offering from Cyberoam, Mr. Pranav Parikh-Manager Business Development for APAC and Europe, NetGenie, said "NetGenie was conceptualized based on Cyberoam’s global consumer survey that presented a strong need for such a product among home and small office Internet users.

"It is first of its kind appliance that integrates online security, Wi-Fi security, advanced Internet access controls, 3G-ready support, and more, in a single appliance, that will save buying and maintenance costs of separate solutions for end users".

Commenting on the partnership with Tekdata, he further added "Tekdata’s strength lies in the wide range of products they distribute and their network of resellers. We are confident of their capability of building the NetGenie brand. Additionally, the professional team and market knowledge will ensure that our sales objectives are met in the region.”

Designed to further strengthen Tekdata's extensive security product line and offer NetGenie the ability to extend its reach into the UK market, the agreement comes at a time when security and content filtering are increasingly an issue for IT managers and families alike.

FACTFILE:
Tekdata Distribution is a specialist distributor of security solutions and services offering products that protect organisations from inevitable security breaches. Protecting mission critical network is essential and with Tekdata’s innovative portfolio of security products, the risk can be reduced to a minimum. Tekdata also supplies value adding services such as training, consultancy, installation and support which offers customers the best in channel knowledge, expertise and value. Our mission is to provide IT solutions and services for whatever requirement in a language that the customer understands.
http://www.tekdata.co.uk/

NetGenie, a product of Cyberoam, is a first-of-its-kind Wi-Fi security solution which gives home and small office users a hack-free and malware-free Internet surfing experience over multiple devices including laptops, iPhones, iPads, gaming consoles, and other next-gen devices, besides protecting over Wired Internet connection. Cyberoam, the network security division of Elitecore Technologies, is in the top league of global security players with 25000+ UTM deployments and established presence in 110+ countries catering to a broad range of industries including manufacturing, retail, finance, healthcare, IT, telecommunications, hospitality and more. Cyberoam was ranked in analyst Gartner’s 2010 Magic Quadrant for UTM as a “Visionary”.
http://www.netgenie.net/

Cloud & Virtualisation experts Assist Ltd come to the rescue of Royal College of Physic

When the load balancing solution at the near 500 year old Royal College of Physicians (RCP) required an upgrade Assist Ltd (www.assist.ltd.uk) was recommended to the organisation and provided prompt assistance.

With over 15 external facing websites becoming intermittently unavailable, the RCP required fast, flexible and responsive support. Reputational and financial damage was at risk due to downtime on systems that processed payments for the RCP Membership and Stakeholders.

The Assist Ltd team worked on site, including around the clock on a number of occasions, deploying Citrix NetScaler, and replacing old NetContinuum boxes with a highly available NetScaler pair.

Ross Bentley, Head of IT services at Assist Ltd: “It was an honour and privilege to be invited to work with the RCP. We were delighted to have services up and running again within four days.”

The new NetScalers also brought advanced application firewall capabilities to the solution.

Errol Trott: “We found the Assist team to be extremely responsive and flexible in terms of our requirements. Their technicians were very proficient and worked well with the RCP’s internal staff to ensure that the replacement firewalls were installed, configured, tested and deployed both professionally and rapidly. Despite the challenging circumstances, the project was a success thanks in no small part to Assist”.

The young know less about technology than older folk!

Flying in the face of conventional wisdom, a Plusnet study has revealed that despite 59% of UK households owning internet enabled PCs, over a quarter (27%) are not familiar with terms like bandwidth, Wi-Fi, cursor, router and download.

Dispelling the myth that it is youngsters who are the most tech savvy of all, the research by the business broadband provider found it was those over 55 who scored well with jargon-busting, as 72% claim they understand all of the terms perfectly. Exactly 39% of 16-24 year olds did not have a clue about these expressions, which is much more than the national statistic of 27%.

Over a fifth (22%) of those aged over 55 have taken lessons on how to use the internet, compared to only 8% of 16-24 year olds, showing that it is not just the older generations who should make use of such classes. Despite widespread belief that the older generations aren't too confident with technology, when it comes to the internet, they are on par or even more self-assured than those in the younger age brackets.

Sending emails and shopping online are the stronger areas for those aged over 55, with 96% and 91% claiming confidence with these activities, compared to 94% and 83% amongst 16-24 year olds respectively. Online bingo however is something that the younger generations are big on, much more so than the older generations, with 50% of those aged 16-24 confidently playing online compared to only 24% of those over 55.

Talking about the survey, Jamie Ford, CEO of Plusnet said: "It just goes to show that despite the growing online literacy in the UK, people are still unsure of certain key terms and uses for the Internet.  An interesting finding from our research is the increased knowledge of the over 55's who have perhaps had to go out independently and source online learning through support sessions in their local community."

"Although youngsters have greater exposure to the internet through their communication habits and means of education, it is the older segment of the audience who are making the effort to get to grips with the net, and therefore learning more about how it all works. Perhaps this Christmas it will be the grandparents' turn to show the grandkids how to use their new gaming console or e-book."

Plusnet and "Go ON Sheffield" help hundreds to get online

A team of Plusnet volunteers have been busy helping out at several events across Sheffield as part of a UK campaign run by Race Online 2012, which aims to help offline residents take their first steps with computers and the Internet. In Sheffield alone, there are an estimated 95,000 residents without Internet access.

Over 50 events were held throughout the City, at venues including Sheffield Town Hall, The Bankers Draft pub on Market Place, High Storrs School and Sheffield United Football Club, with volunteers from UK online centres, Heeley Development Trust, Plusnet and Sheffield University all assisting at the events.

The events catered for a wide range of people including those looking for work, wanting to get in touch with relatives all across the world or just wanting to learn more about the things they love. Betty Tilbrooke, 78, was one visitor who got online for the first time at the event held at Sheffield Town Hall. She said: "I'm sick of calling myself the invisible person because everything that's interesting is on 'www'. If I can do this, I can book my cinema and train tickets, and will even be able to order my groceries online if the bad weather comes again this winter. My daughter and son have been saying "Get online Mum!" for ages. If you don't learn about computers, you’re going to be left behind."

Plusnet, the broadband company with headquarters based in Sheffield, had 25 volunteers helping out at various events round the city centre. Katy Lomax, Head of Marketing at Plusnet, volunteered at the session held on Friday at the Bankers Draft in Sheffield City Centre. She said: "Even as someone used to being online, it's not until you show someone the very basics of the Internet again that you realise how much it has impacted your own life. It's really important that people who do know how to use it can help those who can't, because without using the internet there is so much that you can't do."

Plusnet has sponsored the 'Go ON Sheffield' campaign and donated fifty free broadband packages so some of the new online converts can try their new found skills at home. The fifty packages will be given to those who could benefit the most from getting online at home with the winners being presented with their prizes at a celebration event being held at Sheffield United Football Club. The celebration event will also provide an opportunity to thank all of the volunteers who gave their time during 'Go ON Sheffield'.

Helen Milner, Managing Director of UK online centres said: "'Go ON Sheffield' has been a really great way for us to engage with people in the locations they feel comfortable. The people that aren't currently online are often resistant to formal learning environments so, by bringing the learning to them - in pubs, at football clubs and wherever they feel at home - we can break down these barriers and show them the real benefits being online can bring them.

"We wouldn't have been able to run a campaign as big as this without the volunteers who came from all over the City, and they really made the campaign what it was. By working with Heeley Development Trust and volunteers from Plusnet, Sheffield University and all over, it really felt like we were bringing the city together for a really positive cause."

FACTFILE:
Plusnet has been based in Sheffield since its inception in 1997 and provides residential and business broadband across the UK. Plusnet offers cheap broadband with its Plusnet Value and Plusnet Extra broadband packages both available to purchase with home phone, fibre optic broadband and a prioritisation service, Plusnet Pro.

www.plus.net

Are your staff killing your business? “Recreational traffic is adding to the 75% web traffic overload of networks during the working day” says Peter Job, CEO of Intergence

Analysis of client audits carried out over four years by Intergence Systems, a leading independent IT optimisation consultancy, has revealed that in 90% of cases, web traffic is one of the top three contributors to network traffic; and that out of that 90%, web traffic forms between 10% and 30% of the traffic overload during any given 24 hour period. During the working day, this percentage of traffic can rise to over 75%.

The research found that the only two applications which consistently contribute more traffic to company networks are backups (which typically take place out-of-hours) and Server Message Blocks/Common Internet File Systems (SMBs/CIFS) which provide shared access to files, printers, serial ports, and other miscellaneous communications between nodes on a network.

Intergence’s monitoring allows IT managers to see exactly what websites are being looked at, so that they can identify if it is legitimate browsing for work purposes or whether it is on recreational sites such as Facebook or You Tube. If, for example, there is a lot of web traffic (HTTP/HTTPS), going to a server which is known to be a webmail server, then that traffic will be re-filed under “email” and so doesn’t count towards the other web traffic which is going to external servers.

Peter Job, CEO of Intergence comments: “During a working day, unmanaged web-browsing (often on Facebook or You Tube) can introduce enough traffic into a network to have a major impact on business critical applications, especially those sensitive to network congestion. Companies might be paying for bigger pipes than are necessary to increase their bandwidth on the mistaken assumption that all the traffic they are carrying is essential. In fact, in our experience, most companies don’t know exactly what traffic they are carrying.”

Job suggests that businesses should ask themselves:

• If too much web browsing is occurring, how is it impacting on company productivity - both from slow applications frustrating other users, but also from employees wasting company time?
• Is it better to cut off all non-essential web traffic completely at specific times of the day, or just ensure that traffic flow management systems are in place?

Job continues:

“Rich content is a major problem as services like Facebook add more and more functions, but Intergence can install specialist software that can monitor and measure who is using what and when, giving IT managers full visibility of application traffic.”

This can enable them to:

• Install application performance SLAs
• Synchronise their WAN with business objectives
• Communicate high-level KPIs across the business
• Justify, control and reduce IT costs
• Improve critical application performance

For information on how Intergence can help, please download their Network Optimisation paper from this link:

http://www.intergence.com/resource-library/white-papers-pres...

Fabric Interface announces merger with Digi Nut

Two top web design and development agencies – Digi Nut and Fabric Interface have announced that they are merging. The newly formed company will be led by Danny Bull and Mike Staines who were formerly managing directors of Digi Nut and Interface, respectively.

The new company will retain the name Fabric Interface and remain a subsidiary of its parent company; Fabric Technologies.

The merger brings together two successful and long-established agencies, each with their own specific areas of expertise, experience and digital marketing specialisation. The agency will provide digital marketing services to a client-base of over 250 companies in addition to new clients.

Digi Nut was formed in 2006 and has considerable experience. It has provided creative and technical outsourcing resources to a number of prominent advertising and marketing agencies including RAPP, TBWA, Airside and Draftfcb. Digi Nut also works directly with clients and has recently completed projects for Kriega, Ibiza Rocks and The Food Network.

Fabric Interface has extensive creative resources alongside wide experience in the development of bespoke ecommerce, mobile and software applications for its client-base of small and mid-market organisations. Interface has also recently completed projects for a number of major brands including Barclaycard, Nokia, Zolfo Cooper and Abbey Colleges.

Fabric Interface was formed by Mike Staines – a Fellow of the Royal College of Arts – who comments: “The merger and the pooling of resources sees the creation of a new agency with a uniquely broad spectrum of creative and technical offerings. These will maximise our ability to translate our clients’ brands and business strategies into effective, highly creative and technically innovative ecommerce campaigns.”

“Our portfolio of products and services includes mobile website development, cross-platform mobile app development and social media strategy and development – each of which are increasingly essential resources for businesses.”

Fabric Interface is a subsidiary of Fabric Technologies – an award winning business technology consultancy with expertise in unified communications, managed services, cloud computing and Microsoft business solutions such as Dynamics CRM and SharePoint 2010.

Says Danny Bull: “Being able to utilise Fabric’s wider portfolio and integrate their advanced businesses technologies with our core digital production offering puts us in an incredibly strong position. We’re excited and confident about the future.”

Fabric Technologies’ Chairman, Simon Kentish, concludes: “The merger is an important milestone for the Fabric group. Fabric Interface now has a broader service portfolio and Danny brings many years of experience in the advertising sector. Together, Mike and Danny’s team can now deliver a wider range of state of the art web and app technologies to all our customers.”

www.fabricinterface.com

North West It Firm Celebrates 20 Years Trading

IT services provider, Flexsys, is celebrating 20 years trading in the North West.

The owner-managed business, headed by entrepreneur Adrian Smith, was established in 1991 - the same year as the world wide web went 'live'. Starting out as a team of six programmers with a single client, the company has evolved into a five site international operation, turning over £19m.

"Twenty years is a lifetime in technology terms," says Flexsys Managing Director, Adrian Smith. "Obviously there have been so many changes in that time, not least the evolution of IT into a business critical service."

As the IT sector focus shifted from programming and bespoke software development in the late 90s, through to 'office in a box' solutions and managed services into the new millennium, so too did the Flexsys offering.

"We saw our biggest growth spurt in the late 90s when the hype surrounding the millennium bug went into overdrive," recalls Smith. "The company scaled up to 40 programmers practically overnight in order to cope with the sheer volume of work. I think the team attacked something like five million lines of code to try and crack the Y2K data storage situation, which - put simply - came about from information being filed using the abbreviated two digit date format. The problem was also compounded by the Euro being introduced around the same time, so there were issues with customer systems not being compatible with the new currency.

"Then, post the year 2000, companies suddenly woke up to the fact that any development work had been on hold for at least two years and there was a growing need for long overdue updates. At that time, there was lessening demand for our 'bread and butter' mainframe programming applications for large organisations with bulk data processing requirements and a move towards off-the-shelf software packages for businesses of all sizes, in varying sectors. We made a strategic decision to harness our internal IT engineering expertise and reposition our service offering to regional SMEs seeking IT support.

"The current focus is very much on helping our customers harness cloud technologies. SMEs are actually in a strong position to lead the way in this arena because of their inherent agility. As well as upfront savings on physical hardware and deployment costs there are less obvious benefits of becoming early adopters of this model. For example, there are massive advantages from a business continuity perspective.

"While there is a common misconception that data hosted off-site is more vulnerable to loss and corruption, in fact the opposite is true. In reality, companies on a cloud network can set-up again almost immediately in the event of an incident. If you're reliant on data held on-site, however, what would happen if your facilities were affected by flood or fire? Imagine going back to square one after building your business up from scratch - because that's effectively what you'd need to do without any data records."

As champions of the cloud, Flexsys sets itself apart from other IT providers by taking a focused and straight-forward stance, which applies across its service offering. The company covers four core areas, namely: managed IT support, hosted desktop services, cloud wireless networks, and legacy application support. Its premise is providing enterprise level IT infrastructure and services to small to medium sized corporations.

"Many SMEs resolve themselves to the fact that being at the receiving end of IT issues is par for the course, but this needn't be the case," says Adrian. "It stands to reason that a one-man-band IT operation will not deliver the same support levels as a more established set-up.

"At the other end of the spectrum, however, the solutions/partner/consultancy approach taken by many of the bigger IT providers is beginning to wear thin. These buzz terms are pretty meaningless to most owner-managers - SMEs simply seek a supplier who can make their system work and make it work well."

The company's transparent 'price per user', fixed monthly fee approach differentiates its offer from similar providers by essentially productising IT services. All Flexsys customers can rely on unlimited support for a set cost that covers strategic input as well as ongoing maintenance requirements.

For further information visit www.flexsys-group.co.uk

Certainly not 'head in the clouds' as hosting and cloud company iomart Group plc profits rise 618%!

iomart Group plc, the managed hosting and cloud computing services company, has just announced a very healthy 618% rise in profit before tax to the London Stock Exchange.

The company’s financial results year ending 31 March 2011 showed profit before tax rose to £2.8m (2010:£0.4m, before gain reduction in deferred consideration of £09m). iomart Group’s revenue also showed a big increase, up 38% to £25.3m from £18.3m in the previous financial year.

The majority of growth announced by the Glasgow-head-quartered company came from its hosting (http://iomarthosting.com) operations which generated revenue of £17.7m, a rise of 61% from £11.0m in 2010. This figure includes revenues from the acquisition in November 2010 of Titan Internet for £4.2m, however even taking into account this purchase, hosting revenue still jumped by 47% with many customers looking specifically for cloud-based and enterprise hosting solutions.

Angus MacSween, CEO of iomart Group plc, said: “Cloud computing is something of a buzz word with many companies who add the ‘cloud’ tag to everything they do, yet don't back it up with reliable delivery mechanisms.

“At iomart we have built our technologies from the ground up specifically to be delivered via cloud. As a result we are becoming recognised as an authority on the provision of cloud-hosting solutions and are well positioned to take advantage as the market evolves and people look for reliable vendors.”

iomart Hosting won 400 new orders over the course of the year, many of which were additional orders from existing customers. Increasingly these orders include some aspect of cloud or virtual computing in the overall solution package.

Angus MacSween added: “With more businesses looking to the cloud for their data solutions we believe we have positioned ourselves well to take advantage of this market moving forward. We are in a market that is growing and that is here to stay and we fully expect to participate strongly in that growth.”

Double gold win for Titan Internet

Titan Internet gains Microsoft Gold Hosting and Server Platform Competency in the Microsoft Partner Network

Cloud hosting specialist Titan Internet has announced it has achieved two Gold Competencies for its technological expertise from global software giant Microsoft.

Titan, part of iomart Group plc, achieved Microsoft Gold Competency in the Microsoft Partner Network for two core areas of its business - Hosting and Server Platform solutions. This means that Titan has staff with the highest level of skill and achievement to implement and support Microsoft hosting solutions for its customers.

Lee Christie, Director of Titan Internet, said: “It’s now far more difficult to achieve this elite status with Microsoft because they require the very highest of standards, so I’m absolutely delighted we have achieved not one but two of their Gold competencies. This means Titan customers can be assured we have both highly qualified and experienced staff to support their business web hosting needs.

The Gold Hosting and Server Platform Competencies differentiate us from the competition and establish us as market leaders, further demonstrating our commitment to serving the needs of customers relying on Microsoft-based solutions.”

Titan Internet provides hosting solutions to over 3,000 customers across the UK, serving a mixture of organisations from large corporates and Government bodies through to local businesses and hobbyists. Clients include the number one flight search engine Skyscanner, Deloitte LLP, British American Tobacco, Ministry of Defence, and the National Parks.

The Microsoft Partner Network is designed to equip organisations that deliver products and services on the Microsoft Platform with the training, resources and support they need to provide their customers with a superior experience and outcomes. Titan Internet offers dedicated hosting on Microsoft platforms. Titan is also a hosting partner through Microsoft’s two schemes for business start-ups and SMEs, called WebsiteSpark and BizSpark. Titan has also become a Microsoft Small Business Specialist.

Jon Roskill, Corporate Vice President, Worldwide Partner Group at Microsoft Corp, said: “The Microsoft Partner Network is designed to empower solution providers to succeed in today’s business environment. By achieving the prestigious Gold competency, participating companies are provided with a rich set of benefits, including increased customer visibility through branding and accessibility, training and support.”

Titan Internet was founded by Lee Christie over ten years ago. It has 25 staff based at its offices in Rochford, Essex. Titan was bought last year (2010) by AIM-listed iomart Group plc , one of the UK leaders in the delivery of mission-critical managed hosting and cloud computing services, because of its skilled technical expertise particularly in the areas of virtualisation and network management.
Angus MacSween, CEO of iomart Group plc, said: “Titan’s achievement of Microsoft Gold Competency in two core areas of its business illustrates why it is such an important addition to the iomart Group.”
Titan Internet will carry Microsoft Gold recognition for Hosting and Server Platform solutions, encompassing a range of Microsoft technologies:
• Windows Server hosting
• Windows SQL Server hosting
• Windows Exchange hosting

In addition to the Microsoft Gold Competencies, Titan Internet already has VMware, Linux, Oracle, and Adobe Certified staff.

-ends-
News release issued on behalf of Titan Internet by Jane Robertson, Head of PR for iomart Group plc. For more information please email jane.robertson@iomart.com or call 0141 931 6474.

Notes for editors:
Photo: Lee Christie, Director of Titan Internet (front row, second from left) and staff at Titan Internet. Photo is free to use.

FACTFILE:

Based in Rochford, Essex, Titan Internet Ltd was founded by Lee Christie in 2001. Titan Internet was bought by iomart Group plc (AIM:IOM) in November 2010 for £4.2 million. It currently manages over 1000 servers on behalf of clients ranging from SMEs to large corporates.

Titan Internet has grown each year since it was established. Titan has expanded to become one the UK’s most respected and technically advanced hosting companies, particularly in the areas of virtualisation and network management.

For details about Titan Internet, please visit www.titaninternet.co.uk