Australian GP: Williams revamps team website

AT&T SYNAPTIC HOSTING PROVIDING THE HIGH SPEED POWER BEHIND AT&T WILLIAMS WEB SITE

Melbourne, AUSTRALIA, March 26, 2010 -- As the 2010 FIA Formula One Championship moves from Bahrain to Australia for the second race of the 2010 season, AT&T Williams has announced it is using AT&T Synaptic HostingSM and AT&T's Intelligent Content Distribution Service (ICDS) to support its enhanced multifaceted global web presence at: www.attwilliams.com.

AT&T Williams has launched a brand new media-rich web site for the 2010 season and the site is already proving to be a big hit with fans from around the world. AT&T Williams aims to create the most informative and popular of the team sites in motor sport.

By improving the experience through enhanced functionality and content, the team hopes to be able to boost traffic to attwilliams.com. In 2009 AT&T Williams saw a 71% uplift in visitor numbers from 2008 with monthly hits increasing from approximately 36,000 in '08 to 62,000 in 2009. The team expect to be hitting the 90,000 mark in 2010. This year alone, the site has enjoyed 312,000 visitors and over 1 million page views. To do this the team needs a robust and flexible hosting solution.

Synaptic Hosting is AT&T's next-generation utility computing service with managed networking, security, storage and application acceleration for businesses. Its utility computing features are an ideal solution for organizations -- such as a racing team -- whose business needs are seasonal or unpredictable, or where end-user traffic spikes are a given.

Chris Taylor, IT Manager at Williams F1 elaborates: "AT&T's Synaptic Hosting solution is our preferred technology for hosting the new web site because this can grow with the future demands of our media department and their vision for providing the most informative and popular site in Grand Prix racing. The Synaptic Hosting model provides a more flexible approach to web hosting with the ability to flex its resources such as CPU, Memory and Bandwidth as and when it is required such as the lead up to the new season or particular event."

By giving Williams F1 access to more capacity 'on demand' AT&T's Synaptic Hosting Service will therefore allow for increased video-casting, webcasts and rich media content the team website.

The existing AT&T Williams web site already had a wealth of media content, from images to videos and podcasts, all of which demanded considerable bandwidth. As a new season opened, the site had to archive all that material and cope with new content, especially video. 2010 will see AT&T Williams deliver more rich media content than we have ever before. Knowing that the servers can comfortably accommodate all of this new content, while still hosting the old, is a vital capability.

The objective behind the new site at attwilliams.com is to offer a more engaging online experience, not only for supporters to get a closer look at the team, but also for fans to engage with each other.

Incorporating social media tools within the site, such as the Team Player area which allows users to create a profile, upload content, rate, share and comment on all of our content, enter competitions, vote on polls etc., gives them a voice and hopefully makes them feel part of the Williams "family."

It also provides the team with valuable feedback as to what material is proving popular so it can respond accordingly. Having a registration-based fan area, which is free, also satisfies an increasing requirement for the team to build a CRM database.

As the team looks forward to 2011, they are already planning to add more user generated content (UGC) functionality whereby Team Players will be able to upload their own racingrelated videos, so having a flexible, resilient and robust platform such as AT&T Synaptic Hosting to support that objective will be crucial.

Today, attwilliams.com attracts visitors from 183 territories, so AT&T's Intelligent Content Distribution Service (ICDS) will replicate the AT&T Williams website across AT&T's international data centres, ensuring that site visitors from anywhere in the world will get an enhanced experience. This is vital in meeting the expectations of visitors to the site who expect websites for organisations in Grand Prix racing to deliver information at the touch of the button.

As the site continues to develop and the race season progresses, AT&T Williams anticipate visitor numbers will increase. The team has a new driver pairing which has also had a bearing on site traffic. Rubens Barrichello has a keen fanbase who have all shifted their allegiance to AT&T Williams and the team expect Nico Hulkenberg to also attract more visitors to the site as well. As more Team Players sign up, there will be more UGC on the site, all of which combined will place a greater demand on AT&T services.

*AT&T products and services are provided or offered by subsidiaries and affiliates of AT&T Inc. under the AT&T brand and not by AT&T Inc.

-source: williams