iomart Hosting’s clear vision helps shape the Education Cloud for Korean children

iomart Hosting is working with BETT 2010 award winners Manic Monkey to deliver an interactive English language learning system called Little Bridge which allows children to explore a safe virtual world where they can learn the language and join an English speaking community of Young Learners.

Sarah Haran, MD of iomart Hosting, said: “The appetite for cloud-based learning delivery in the Far East continues to grow and we are excited to be helping yet another innovative education provider to deliver its online products into that market.”

Emma Rogers, chief executive of Manic Monkey, said: “Korea has got an incredibly strong market culture in education and there is huge pressure on children to succeed academically. English is the language of the world and so we saw there was a substantial market to deliver our products in a virtual environment.”

Little Bridge is a SaaS-based Virtual Learning Environment so it needs to be available to users at all times. iomart Hosting was chosen to provide the hosting platform for Little Bridge because of its links with the Asian market through its Content Delivery Network partner: CDNetworks.

Mike Richardson, responsible for Global Online Strategy at Manic Monkey, added: “What was so important to us about iomart Hosting was their ability to work closely as a support partner. They were really pro-active. They had a clear vision of how they would deliver the project and they were great collaborators. It was a really good experience working with them. There was absolutely no pain.”

Manic Monkey already provides popular education material via CD-Rom, with integral print packages to schools around the world. Schools and individual parents can buy their products and access material online.

The two companies will continue to work together to develop other opportunities in the Far East. There are plans to deliver Little Bridge to Hong Kong, Thailand, as well as the Japanese and Chinese markets in the near future.

iomart Hosting works with a growing number of key education providers including London School of Economics and ufi/learndirect while Netintelligence, its e-security brand, is providing the safety software for the UK Government’s Home Access project to supply laptops and broadband access to children from low income families in England and Wales.

iomart Hosting is part of iomart Group plc which earlier last month (June 2 2010) announced its full-year results showing a 55% increase in revenues and a doubling of its hosting customers.

About iomart Hosting

iomart Hosting is one of the UK’s leading providers of hosting services. From a single server through to private cloud networks, iomart specialises in the delivery and management of mission-critical hosting services, enabling customers to reduce the costs, complexity and risks associated with maintaining their own web and online applications. By physically owning and managing its own network infrastructure, including five state-of-the-art data centres in the UK, it offers world-beating levels of service to its customers.

About Manic Monkey

Manic Monkey creates world beating educational resources for young learners. Virtual worlds and stunning 3-D graphics are uniquely combined with recognized learning programmes and international standards. Little Bridge is a best-selling, blended learning ELT resource in 6 levels. Littlebridge.com is an exciting new portal for young learners of English.

Manic Monkey – Winner, Education Exporter of the Year 2009 (Education Resources Awards)Finalist – BETT Awards 2009Winner – BETT Awards 2010