Kiwi Punch Behind Aussies’ Boxing Kangaroo

25 September 2000
For immediate release

Kiwi Firm Netbyte Packs the Punch Behind Aussies’ Boxing Kangaroo

Australian sports fans can keep an eye on their Olympic team and other sporting heroes through a new website - www.boxingkangaroo.com.au – which was designed, built and is hosted by Auckland based web developers Netbyte.

The website, which went live in July, was commissioned by the Australian Olympic Committee. Dominated by images of the yellow and red boxing kangaroo, Australia’s Olympic mascot, the site contains interviews with members of the Australian team, a photo gallery, news updates from the Athlete’s Village, an online store offering Boxing Kangaroo merchandise and a Boxing Kangaroo ‘webtoon’.

A major consideration of the brief was to ensure the site could cope with an onslaught of visitors during the Sydney 2000 Olympics – the Australian Olympic Committee estimated the site could serve up to 5,000,000 page impressions per day during the games. The result is the first hosting solution of its kind in the Pacific.

Netbyte’s Technical Director Scott Wilson says they brought in new heavy duty hosting equipment to cope with the expected traffic.

“We implemented an Intel 7170 Traffic Director – a device used for balancing load across multiple web servers. There are currently three dual Pentium III 700 web servers, two single Pentium III 700 dedicated image servers and a quad-processor Xeon 400 database server.”

“The hosting infrastructure and scripting had to be very stable, because the site is updated continuously to keep up with Olympic results”.

The whole site is built using Java servlets and Java server pages, reading from a Sybase SQL server. Netbyte brought in three new Java developers to help with the construction.

Netbyte is part of the Infinity Group, which purchased a 50% shareholding in March this year. It currently has a staff of 20, having more than doubled in size since earlier this year.

Penny Wilson, Netbyte’s Managing Director, says the backing of the Infinity Group will help Netbyte realise its potential.

”We have a number of other large projects in the pipeline now, and the association with Infinity Group can only increase our ability to compete in these markets.”

Infinity Group is an end-to-end IT services group. It owns or has shareholdings in a range of new economy companies in New Zealand, offering a variety of software and IT consulting solutions.

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For further information contact:

Penny Wilson
penny@netbyte.com

Communications contact:

Leigh Strange
ph 04 499 9111
leigh@svl.co.nz

B A C K G R O U N D

Netbyte
http://www.netbyte.com

Netbyte is 50% owned by Infinity Group. The other 50% is owned by Scott Wilson, Technical Director and Paul Tuckey, Head Developer. Netbyte was started by Scott and Penny Wilson in May 1995. It began as a corporate Internet service provider and evolved with its existing client base into providing website design, scripting, website database integration, programming, and web hosting.

Prior to founding Netbyte, Scott Wilson, Technical Director, had many years’ experience working with technology and new media. Penny Wilson, Netbyte Managing Director, had an extensive background in sales and media.

Infinity Group

Infinity Group was formed to bring together a number of successful and growing companies operating in the IT services sector in New Zealand and Australia. Its focus is providing quality, reliability and innovation for its clients, with a vision to become a leading independent provider of IT services and software.

Infinity Group currently owns or has shareholdings in ten technology firms: Madison Systems madison.co.nz), Merit Solutions (madison.co.nz), Trilogy (trilogy.co.nz), Quanta (quanta.co.nz), Vista Entertainment vista.co.nz), Netbyte (netybyte.co.nz), Infovista (infovista.com.au), Comtex (comtex.co.nz), RDT Pacific (rdtpacific.co.nz) and eSee (e-see.com).

The executive team and board of Infinity Group represent a wealth of experience in technology and business development. The board currently consists of six directors: Patsy Reddy (Chair), Ross Baker, Paul Collins, Bruce Hancox, Jon Hartley and Nigel Gould.

The management team are Ross Baker, CEO (previously General Manager of Business Development at NZ Post), Jon Hartley, Executive Director (previously CEO of Solid Energy, and is the non-executive Chair of Sky City Limited) and Stuart Robb, CFO (previously with Telecom and Ernst & Young).

ENDS

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