London – September 7, 2010 – Attenda Limited, the Always On Managed Services Company, today announced that it had signed a four year contract renewal with the Rugby Football Union (RFU) to host the RFU website on Attenda’s Cloud computing platform.
As part of the contract Attenda will provide fully managed hosting services for the RFU website which includes corporate and club information and is utilised by all UK rugby clubs to register players and record match results.
The solution is based upon Attenda’s Cloud computing platform, Attenda RTI, providing capacity on demand, with the capability to flex capacity rapidly as the usage of the website peaks on match days throughout the rugby season. The new contract is providing RFU with high availability service levels, supported by an agile, highly performing, resilient and future-proofed infrastructure solution that can scale up or down in line with demand, delivering a high degree of agility and cost effectiveness.
The RFU first became an Attenda client in 2004 and this is the second contract renewal that has been completed since that date. Attenda’s web applications managed service provides the RFU with the availability, security and performance that it needs for its strategic website, which received in the region of 3.2 million unique visitors during 2009, with 36.4 million page views over the same period and expected to increase by up to 30% during 2010.
Commenting on the contract renewal, Paul Vaughan, Business Operations Director, RFU said: “We have built a long term partnership with Attenda as our trusted hosting services provider. With Attenda RTI we have invested in a technology that can grow with our business and respond to the seasonal peaks in our website traffic as required, with a price per usage model that reduces our operating costs.”
The Rugby Football Union is the national governing body for grassroots and elite rugby in England. It was the biggest of all rugby nations in 2008, with 1,900 autonomous rugby clubs in its membership. The clubs are grouped within 35 Constituent Bodies (CBs) who are represented on RFU Council together with National Representative Bodies which include referees, rugby players association and premiership rugby. These are supported by the RFU's 50 Rugby Development Officers, eight Regional Development Managers and no less than 150 Community Rugby Coaches across the country, who provide some 30,000 coaching sessions a year for young people. The RFU employs approximately 500 paid staff and helps to train and support up to 40,000 volunteers.
