South Australian Internet hosting service provider Hostworks has been selected as an accredited application service provider partner of Microsoft and, with its newly elevated status, will be able to market and host selected Microsoft products for corporate and government customers through its ASP service. Hostworks claims to be one of the first Australian service providers to gain the partner accreditation, which is a component of Microsoft's .NET strategy.
"Hostworks hosts one of just four international MSN Tier 1 data centres, the others being in Seattle, London and Tokyo," explained Kevin Rodrigo, Microsoft's network service provider manager. "Microsoft is delighted that Hostworks has joined our ASP program and will extend its offerings to include hosted delivery of Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Office," he added.
Marty Gauvin, managing director of Hostworks, said the alliance with Microsoft is a vital component of a strategy to position Hostworks as a leading infrastructure provider to large corporate and government organisations as they increasingly use Internet-based sites and applications to build their businesses. The Australian company's clients include ninemsn, which is also a large shareholder, and after last week's awarding of a long-term outsourcing contract, Ticketek.
The latest outsourcing contract includes the managed hosting of Ticketek's Australian and New Zealand operations, both of which will be managed from Hostworks's Adelaide data centre. Over recent months Ticketek's Web site has registered sales as high as one ticket per second, accounting for a significant proportion of overall ticket sales sold at peak times for various events, a spokesman claimed. "Ticketek is an outstanding example of a bricks and mortar business successfully deploying a highly complementary and efficient online distribution channel that enhances their customer proposition," Gauvin noted.