VeriCenter Keeps Mars Rover Website Live for 35 Million Visitors

VeriCenter Keeps Mars Rover Website Live for 35 Million Visitors

HostReview.com
Wednesday, March 3, 2004; 12:00 AM

March 3, 2004, Houston, Texas - VeriCenter Inc., a provider of enterprise managed hosting services, ensured Website availability for the 35 million Web visitors seeking news of the North American Space Administration's (NASA) Mars Rover Mission.

Taking 225 million hits in the first 24 hours after the Mars rover Spirit landed, and 6.5 billion hits in the past month and a half, the NASA Portal, home to the Mars Rovers (marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov) site has become one of the most visited Websites in Internet history. NASA's Assistant Administrator for the Office of Public Affairs recently called the Mars Rover landings the biggest Web event ever experienced by a U.S. government site - including the annual run on the IRS Web site each tax season.

VeriCenter delivered the managed hosting muscle required to ensure 100% availability of Web content as NASA's Websites received an unprecedented number of hits from around the world. Worldwide demand for access to NASA's Websites was at record levels for several days as images from Mars were posted just minutes after acquisition. VeriCenter, through its recent acquisition of assets from Sprint E|Solutions, owns and manages the hardened and secure data centers and technology infrastructure that house and run the NASA Portal Websites for eTouch Systems, the prime contractor for the NASA Portal.

"Because of the reliability, security and quality of VeriCenter's hosting services, we have been able to provide 100% availability of our multi-tiered NASA Web delivery infrastructure. As a result, all of the magnificent Mars Rover images have been available within seconds of their release by Jet Propulsion Lab's Web publishers to the 35,000,000 people who have taken a look at them," said David Valliere, Federal Programs Manager for eTouch Systems. "Being able to provide continuous 100% availability with that type of demand is a real accomplishment. And we rely on VeriCenter to deliver that kind of service on a day-to-day basis."

"We're proud to have been a key part of this historic event," said VeriCenter CEO Gray Hall. "NASA's goal of providing valuable and timely information about Mars to a global audience demands a highly available and reliable infrastructure. Delivering this infrastructure is our focus and our specialty."

Thus far, 150 terabytes of information have been downloaded by visitors to the site. As a point of reference, all of the books in the Library of Congress total around 20 terabytes of information.

About VeriCenter
VeriCenter is the largest profitable enterprise managed services provider in the United States, delivering advanced operating infrastructure for hosting critical business applications, enabling utility computing and providing disaster recovery solutions. VeriCenter's OpCenter suite of enterprise hosting services allows customers to lower operational costs and optimize technology spending, so they can focus on their core business and avoid excessive investment in application operations, infrastructure and staff. For more information, visit www.vericenter.com.

Contact: Leslie Butterfield Vice President Marketing 281 584-4500