Guinness WorldRecords.com goes online with Microsoft and Intel

Guinness World Records has launched its new GuinnessWorldRecords.com Web site, built on an e-business solution from Microsoft and Intel. Microsoft and Intel were selected as the primary technology providers, replacing a Sun Microsystems strategy - meeting the 90 day deadline for the site to go live.

GuinnessWorldRecords.com is the online extension of Guinness World Records, a globally recognised brand that includes the Guinness Book of World Records and television show, syndicated worldwide to an audience of 100 million viewers. The site creates a world-class entertainment presence on the Web and offers a truly interactive experience for fans of Guinness World Records including videos, streaming media, games, e-cards, flash movies and an extensive presentation of Guinness World Records themselves.

"The Guinness World Records brand presents infinite opportunities," says Stephen Nelson, CEO of GuinnessWorldRecords.com. "To launch our site, we needed a platform that could meet our needs for personalised content, dynamic publishing, database management, reliability and scalability. At the same time, we wanted a platform flexible enough to ensure that our future growth would not be limited. The switch to the Microsoft and Intel solution not only guaranteed our launch date, but has given us the flexibility that we want."

GuinnessWorldRecords.com is the latest customer to adopt the Intel and Microsoft e-business solution under a recently announced e-business alliance between the two companies. Microsoft and Intel are working together to deliver joint customer solutions, as well as offering integration and service to e-businesses such as FreeMarkets and Lycos.com.

"Companies building online solutions demand technology that will not only get them to market fast, but also offers the assurance that their infrastructure will grow with their needs," said Garry Hodgson, Internet development group director at Microsoft South Africa. "GuinnessWorldRecords.com and other industry-leading companies are selecting the Intel and Microsoft solution to deliver the most agile e-business solutions on the market, giving them the competitive advantage required for success today, while ensuring their ability to compete in the markets of tomorrow."

"The collaboration between Intel and Microsoft offers customers a flexible e-business architecture to accelerate their time-to-market deployment with new Internet services," says Colin Purkis, e-business architecture manager Intel South Africa. "GuinnessWorldRecords.com continues the list of companies that have benefited from the modular `scale-out` methodology that makes Intel-based servers ideal for today`s fast-growing Internet economy."

GuinnessWorldRecords.com relies on Intel Online Services for hosting and support of its solution. For Guinness, the choice to host its site with Intel Online Services resulted in a quick time to market and the assurance of knowing that as demand for the site grows, the solution can easily scale up through the addition of industry-standard hardware and software components recommended and deployed by Intel. The site operates on five Intel-based four-way Dell PowerEdge 6350 servers featuring the Pentium III Xeon processor and two clustered Dell PowerEdge 6350 four-way servers, featuring Pentium III Xeon-based processors as database servers in the back end. The site runs on Microsoft software including the Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server operating system, which includes Microsoft Internet Information Services 5.0 and Microsoft SQL Server 7.0. The demanding 90-day time-to-market deadline was met through the use of the Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 development system and delivered through the help of Conchango, a back-end development company with significant experience on the Microsoft platform, and Oasis Communications, a front-end development team.