Ladbrokes is getting ready for brisk online betting trade
during Euro 2004 and the Olympics by revamping its web IT
architecture in a multimillion-pound server
roll-out.
New server systems from Sun Microsystems are geared towards helping
Ladbrokes.com build on the one million punters already registered
to use the online betting service. They will also provide a
disaster recovery facility in the event of technical difficulties.
Steve Maxwell, director of e-gaming at Ladbrokes.com, said, "The
Grand National saw a 50% increase in the number of customers
placing bets online, and with a busy sporting summer ahead, we
needed the systems in place to manage a growing membership of our
online service."
The architecture will allow users to place bets via any channel -
Sky TV, mobile phone, internet or shop - using a single account
with a single log-in.
Sun integrator Repton has installed the system. It includes server
clusters that are being deployed in both the UK and Gibraltar to
provide disaster recovery facilities for each processing centre -
if one goes down, the other takes over, with customers seeing no
interruption in service.
In addition, 24 servers have been deployed to support the website's
application layer and 10 servers have been deployed to support the
web layer.