LONDON, July 3 /PRNewswire/ --

- Virtualization and Managed Hosting Technology Used to Absorb Peak Numbers of Online Football Fans and Video Users

LONDON, July 3 /PRNewswire/ --

NTT Europe Online, managed hosting provider to UEFA official public websites and extranet platform reveals how virtualization technology was used as part of its hosting platform to support record levels of web traffic to http://www.euro2008.com, the official website for the 2008 European Championships.

NTT Europe Online provides UEFA with dedicated architecture and design, implementation service delivery and live event teams to ensure the smooth running of the tournament online. The core managed hosting services consisted of over 50 terabytes of storage, Content Delivery Network solutions, hosting, virtualized servers and network-level security that ran over NTT Europe Online's global IP network. There were also many virtualized production and back-end environments to service the IT applications, portals and extranets required for a global event web site such as euro2008.com.

Andy Pattison, Project Manager for www.euro2008.com said of the site: "With 1.2 billion page views, 100 million visits by over 50 million visitors from over 200 countries logging on within one month; it was paramount that we delivered concise and quality coverage of the tournament online. We chose NTT Europe Online as partners for their expertise in hosting large and complex online events."

"euro2008.com offers live streaming of all 31 finals matches, footage of 130 games from previous tournaments as well as an archive of a few thousand matches from UEFA competitions. Increased demand for online video was a challenge that only a partner with technology and an international infrastructure could solve."

Niels Hilbrink Account Director at NTT Europe Online added: "It was expected there would be online demand like no other previous tournament and that video would play a huge part in this. With live events, you only get one shot at getting it right. www.euro2008.com is a testament to UEFA's forward-looking perspective on technology and how it can be used to reach more and more football fans across the globe."

"Virtualization was only one of a range of technologies used on this occasion, but it was a perfect demonstration of how it can help deliver extra computing resources when needed. The performance of the network as a whole was vital too, especially given the peak traffic loads of 9.1 Gigabits per second and a predicted 300 terabytes of traffic throughout the tournament."

About NTT Europe Online

NTT Europe Online provides managed hosting, security and application management services to businesses globally. These services provide the reliability, availability, security and scalability needed to underpin business success online.

NTT Europe Online is certified to ISO27001 for Information Security Management and, as part of NTT Communications, has the global reach and scale to support businesses of all sizes. NTT Communications is the global data and IP services arm of the Fortune Global 500 telecom leader, Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corporation (NTT). For further information visit http://www.ntteuropeonline.com

About UEFA and UEFA media Technologies

UEFA - the Union of European Football Associations - is the governing body of football on the continent of Europe. UEFA's core mission is to promote, protect and develop European football at every level of the game, to promote the principles of unity and solidarity, and to deal with all questions relating to European football. UEFA is an association of associations based on representative democracy, and is the governing body of European football.

UEFA Media Technologies SA ("UMET") is a fully owned subsidiary of UEFA and UEFA's arm for digital media. UMET evaluates, implements and maintains solutions for the web, IT needs and television production for UEFA and develops know-how in digital media convergence for the benefit of football fans and the football family.

Amongst its activity areas, UMET manages UEFA's websites, uefa.com and euro2008.com, develops and implements UEFA's FAME system (the Football Administration Management Environment, dedicated to the administration of European football) and is in charge of UEFA EURO 2008(TM) host broadcast operations for UEFA.

The core UMET team consists of 130 professionals from 18 different countries, structured in Content, TV Production, ICT and broadcast Partner Services. It provides multiple synergies dealing with complex projects in converged media for UEFA.

Contact: UEFA Media Technologies S.A., Igor Masnjak, Marketing & Research Manager, Tel.: +41-22-707-2530, E-Mail: igor.masnjak@uefa.ch, http://www.euro2008.com. NTT Europe Online, Joseph Thomas/Josh Turner, Brands2Life, +44-(0)20-7592-1200, ntteo@brands2life.com