Managed Hosting Company Rackspace Hosts Edinburgh Fringe Festival

HostReview.com
Wednesday, August 23, 2006; 05:18 AM

Edinburgh Fringe Festival has selected Rackspace Managed Hosting, the UK's most recommended hosting specialist, to host the central website for its annual event.

Now approaching its 60th year, the Fringe Festival is the world's largest arts festival with over 1.35 million expected to attend the event over the next three weeks. The website plays a critical role in providing potential visitors with a convenient way to buy tickets and find up to date information on venues and performance times for the festival's 1,867 shows. The site also enables the Fringe team to communicate with current and future performers.

Dave Ball of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, said: "The Fringe website has become the virtual nerve centre for the overall organisation of the event. Visitors and performers expect access to up to the minute information such as ticket availability, show times and venue locations."

Ball continues: "We considered a number of hosting providers before finding Rackspace. With a three-week festival like this, there is no room for error. Rackspace guarantees 100% uptime and compliments this with Fanatical Support which means the team is on hand to accommodate any last-minute changes we may spring on them. Also, this type of event can generate sudden, unpredictable spikes in traffic when a particular act captures the imagination of the public. Downtime during this peak time could mean the difference between a sell-out performance and an empty theatre. The flexible short term contract Rackspace offered us, confirms they really are as passionate about hosting the Fringe as we are about producing it."

Jacques Greyling, Managing Director, Rackspace Managed Hosting, said: "At its heart Rackspace is a service business. Success for us is all about people and passion, which is why we were so enthusiastic when the chance to work with the Edinburgh Fringe Festival arose. We took time to ensure the right architecture and support was in place to help the Fringe organisers plan for busy periods without wasting money on idle servers in the winter. Our Fanatical Support teams eat, live and breathe customer service and we're glad to have given the Fringe organisers one less thing to worry about!"

Rackspace Managed Hosting (www.rackspace.co.uk) is the fastest growing hosting specialist offering the world’s only Self Healing Network, delivering 100 per cent network availability. Founded in 1998, Rackspace offers a wide range of managed services for enterprise hosting platforms that are business revenue critical. The company has received numerous awards for its brand of customer service known as Fanatical Support including the Unisys/Management Today 2005 Service Excellence Award. For more information, visit Rackspace Web Hosting or call 0800 085 3973.

For further information contact:
Harry Ronaldson/Richard Cook, Kaizo, Tel: 020 7580 8852