Sportingbet safeguards
customer loyalty and profitability with virtual IT infrastructure

Customer challenge

To maintain its competitive advantage in the fast-paced industry of online
gaming, Sportingbet needs to offer highly available services and products to its
large customer base. With the company's websites the only source of revenue,
ensuring a robust backend infrastructure is crucial. However, rapid business
growth was placing increasing strain on the Sportingbet's existing datacenter
infrastructure.

Computacenter solution

Sportingbet partnered with Computacenter to implement two new virtualised
datacenter environments, incorporating a data replication solution and virtualised
network. The new architecture was pre-built and tested at Computacenter's
Integration Centre before being installed at two locations outside mainland
UK. In parallel to the datacenter transformation, Computacenter also helped
Sportingbet with a virtual desktop initiative.

Results

Sportingbet has been able to improve the availability of its online gaming
websites, and is now equipped to cope with continued expansion. It has also
accelerated the time to market for new gaming products and services and has
reduced the time and money associated with IT management. These factors
all contribute to the company's competitive advantage and help to safeguard
profitability.

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Customer profile

At the cutting-edge of online gaming
Sportingbet was one of the first online gaming companies, and remains one of the largest in the world with hundreds of members of staff and a large customer base, who place bets and play games via 40 websites in 21 countries.

Founded in 1998, Sportingbet enables customers to bet on both large and small
sporting events – from Wimbledon tennis matches to Moldovian Football League
games - with up to 180 factors that can be bet on per game. The company also
offers online casino games and poker.

Since May 2010, Sportingbet has been listed on the London Stock Exchange. The
company's plan is to continually develop its market leading sports betting platform
and provide customers with innovative betting opportunities in an environment that is convenient, entertaining, fair, regulated and secure.

Business challenge

Meeting market demand for new products and highly available services
Online gaming is a fast-moving industry. With regulations and market demand
evolving all the time, Sportingbet needs to be able to launch new products and
services rapidly to maintain its competitive advantage.

While remaining dynamic and flexible, Sportingbet must also ensure that its global
services are available round-the-clock. The company's websites are its prime
source of contact with customers, so if IT performance is poor, Sportingbet's
revenues and reputation are quickly impacted.

Mark Grimes, CIO at Sportingbet, comments: "With more than a dozen sports and
gaming bets processed every second, our IT systems have to be up and running
continuously. Downtime is measured in seconds." The datacenters that host Sportingbet's online systems are therefore fundamental to the success of its business. However, the company's rapid growth over the last three years had started to take its toll on the IT infrastructure.

"Although performance was not yet an issue, we wanted to ensure that the
datacenter could continue to support the business at the current growth rate for
the next five years," comments Mark. "We were also keen to improve our disaster
recovery facilities and accelerate time to market for new gaming products and
services."

Computacenter solution

Safeguarding customer experience throughout datacenter transformation
Sportingbet embarked on an ambitious project to implement two new worldclass
datacenters. This included a custom-built facility in Guernsey and a disaster
recovery site offshore.

Following the design of the new architecture, which was executed in-house,
Sportingbet partnered with Computacenter to source the required technologies and assist with the deployment. Mark comments: "We selected Computacenter due to the strength of its vendor relationships and because we had confidence in its ability to deliver a project of this scale."

As the datacenter transformation had to be completed with no disruption to online
services, thorough testing of the new architecture was essential. "Although due
diligence was essential, we were working to a tight deadline due to the 2010 FIFA
World Cup. We needed the new datacenters to be operational to cope with the
expected spike in betting volumes," explains Mark.

To simplify the pre-implementation stages of the project, Sportingbet pre-built and tested the infrastructure, which included Cisco, HP, Sun and Oracle technologies, at Computacenter's Integration Centre.

"With the datacenters located outside mainland UK and a tight schedule,
the logistics of the project were particularly complicated," comments Mark.
"Computacenter ensured the technologies were delivered on time from more than
10 vendors, and then assisted with their implementation and integration."

Increased flexibility with end-to-end virtualisation
Sportingbet's new IT infrastructure is based on a virtualised blade server
environment as well as a virtualised network. "By using virtual switches, we have
created a network that is highly flexible and also self-healing with no single point of failure," comments Mark. "This will simplify network support and minimise the risk of downtime."

The solution also includes technologies that enable long-distance data replication
from Sportingbet's production datacenter to its disaster recovery site. In parallel to the datacenter transformation, Sportingbet has also implemented a virtual desktop environment. Mark comments: "Computacenter helped us to source HP client devices and VMware software to create a virtual desktop infrastructure. With an increasing number of home and remote workers, providing a stable, secure and flexible platform is crucial."

Results

Safeguarding customer loyalty and profitability
Sportingbet's datacenter project was completed successfully and on time in January 2010 with no disruption to customer services. Mark comments:
"Computacenter provided us with advice and assistance throughout the project,
and was key to its success. It has become not just a supplier but a strategic
partner to Sportingbet."

As a result of the its desktop and datacenter transformation, Sportingbet has been able to:

Safeguard customer services: Sportingbet is nearer to achieving its goal of 100 per cent global website availability, and will be able to continue to offer a consistent customer experience as the company grows and betting volumes increase.

Enhance business agility: The company can now launch new gaming products
and services faster, which is key to maintaining customer loyalty and profitability in a dynamic and competitive industry.

Minimise IT management and costs: The virtualised datacenter and desktop
environment are easier to maintain than the legacy infrastructure and therefore
result in a lower cost of ownership.

"By providing customers with an exciting and dynamic portfolio of products and
services via a highly reliable online platform, Sportingbet can continue to enjoy
healthy profitability and a reputation for being at the forefront of online gaming,"
concludes Mark.