(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Providing real-time rankings, statistics and multimedia in the midst of March Madness, AT&T Business Solutions (www.business.att.com) has scored a three-pointer with the National Collegiate Athletic Association (www.ncaa.org), which awarded AT&T a three-year hosting and application management contract powered by AT&T Synaptic Infrastructure, its next-generation utility computing platform.
According to the company’s Monday announcement, AT&T is consolidating the NCAA’s web infrastructure and application management, enhancing the NCAA’s website performance with faster and more reliable service as the NCAA.org site’s web content and IT infrastructure management and monitoring provider.
“Having a single source for all our web needs allows the NCAA technology team to develop greater online services for our business, our student-athletes and their sports,” NCAA chief financial officer Jim Isch said in a statement. “AT&T’s world class solutions keep our site and applications in peak performance around-the-clock, enhancing our productivity and our visitors’ website experience.”
Primarily designed for NCAA schools and student-athletes, the NCAA.org site, deployed on AT&T’s Synaptic Hosting platform, is optimized for management and speed, and its on-demand bandwidth is able to handle web traffic spikes even during seasonal peak traffic times around NCAA March Madness and other sporting events such as recruiting seasons. AT&T’s Synaptic Hosting platform delivers on-demand bandwidth to provide a quality online experience for users no matter the season.
AT&T’s certified professionals will manage the NCAA’s IBM Lotus Web Content Management and WebSphere Portal solutions to create an interface that web managers can use to easily add, catalog and publish sports data and programs. Powering the site, IBM WebSphere Portal management facilitates reliable upkeep of the site’s applications, saving NCAA from potential costly downtime and freeing NCAA’s in-house IT resources.
An official NCAA “corporate champion” since 2002, AT&T has supported the NCAA in various capacities as a way to engage NCAA fans and AT&T customers. AT&T also provides NCAA content to fans through its MobiTV service for wireless devices.
