June 26, 2007 - (HOSTSEARCH.COM) - ninemsn (http://www.ninemsn.com.au/), Australia’s “most popular online destination,” has signed an agreement with Australian web hosting provider Hostworks (http://www.hostworks.com.au/) to continue to receive its web hosting services. The new agreement potentially retains Hostworks’ services until 2013, with a three-year agreement, and a three-year extension option. The terms and conditions of the agreement remain essentially the same as the previous agreements, although Hostworks will also be responsible for providing ninemsn with a “technology roadmap to cope with record growth”.
Hostworks will guarantee the availability of around 130 websites accessible through the ninemsn portal. The new agreement also requires Hostworks enable ninemsn to “introduce new technologies including data acceleration and blade servers while evaluating innovations such as server virtualization and new approaches to business continuity”.
“Hostworks is a key partner for ninemsn,” explained Nick Spooner, Chief Operating Officer of ninemsn. “From a business perspective, it is essential that we guarantee quality of service to maintain our number one market position in terms of online media. Our hosting partnership is critical to support that. A key outcome of the past four years has been our ability to scale to support the business as our online presence grows strongly while maintaining continuity and quality of service in a cost-effective manner. This is a great outcome for our partnership.”
“We deliver outsourcing without constraints,” added Marty Gauvin, Managing Director of Hostworks. “We regularly adapt and update our skills to support ninemsn, which gives us the ability to refresh our services and continue to deliver additional value into our customer’s business. ninemsn has recognized the value of this partnership by signing a new contract that provides Hostworks with substantially the same terms and conditions as existed in our previous agreement.”
ninemsn is Australia’s number one interactive media company with an audience of 8.23 million, meaning “75 per cent of active online Australians use ninemsn to get the news, information and services they want”. Hostworks is the “Asia-Pacific leader in critical enterprise application outsourcing, delivering business systems with guaranteed availability”. Its customers include Codan, Compass Group, Network Ten, SBS, News Digital Media, ninemsn, realestate.com.au, SEEK, Southern Cross View and Wotif.com.
