UNIBET SIGNS UP WEBSITE MANAGEMENT EXPERTS
6/17/10 – The major Reading-based UK internet gambling group Unibet is to up its game in the management and content of company websites following an outsourcing deal with Atex Polopoly.
With 4.4 million online punters across Europe, optimum uptime and maintenance is critical to Unibet, and the Polopoly platform will manage the betting firm’s entire online business, including the creation, launch and updating of new gaming websites, and increasing site ‘stickiness’ through improved content and user experience.
The main Unibet.com site receives an average of 45 million page views a month, but those numbers can vary significantly depending on the size and popularity of a given sporting event, a spokesman said this week. If an event is particularly large, such as a World Cup match, Unibet can experience hundreds of bets being placed per second just before a game, with traffic continuing to fluctuate as the game progresses.
“We make a gross profit of about $250 million dollars a year through our website,” said Stefan Norberg, Unibet Head of Architecture. “It is our bloodline. If it goes down for a day or for an hour, that’s a lot of money. That cuts off our revenue stream. So we needed a system that could handle tough peak loads to deliver the required up-time. And, after much research, we really had strong faith that Polopoly could deliver that stability to us.
“We really want to remove IT from as many website changes as possible so we can focus on developments that have specific business value to us as a company.
The Atex Polopoly system is designed and built to handle large spikes in visitor traffic without affecting overall site performance. The system uses multi-level caching and dynamic page rendering to handle the most demanding online environments.
For Unibet, another key attribute of the Polopoly system is its ability to operate dependably with minimal administrative overhead, thereby allowing staff to concentrate on the company’s core business. With Unibet’s previous home-grown system, minor website changes became lengthy IT projects.
Tasks like tagging content, changing a specific theme, or implementing new functionality could take months to deploy. With Polopoly, Unibet can now launch these website projects quickly, and new microsites can be created without any programming required.
