Camelot has outlined its IT strategy to underpin the
launch of new services for interactive television and mobile
phones.
Camelot, which launched its Lotto game online last December,
aims to become the UK's largest seller of interactive lottery
products worldwide. It is due to launch the lottery on interactive
TV in the spring and on mobile phones later in the year.
Camelot will run the interactive services on IBM servers - two
large D690 servers and a Websphere Apache server. A transaction
engine, supplied by Alpha Gols, is linked to a credit reference
system from Experian to allow Camelot to verify that online
customers are aged 16 or above.
Customer transactions from mobile phones and other new channels
will pass over a virtual private network, supported by Camelot's 35
IT staff, plus contractors.
Eric Brown, head of interactive technology at Camelot, said the
main challenges would be developing a multi-channel architecture to
support the interactive systems and ensuring that IT systems could
meet peaks in demand.
"Everyone wants to buy their tickets online at about 7pm on
Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, ahead of the 7.30 deadline," Brown
said.
Richard Hurd Wood, director of interactive services at Camelot,
said the company took the threat of hackers seriously and had a
three-pronged security strategy comprising firewalls, intrusion
detection systems and systems that can respond to a hacking
attack.