Oct 30 2009
Design Firm Cybernautic Switches to Cloud Sites for Handling of Hundreds of Thousands of Site Visitors During Production and Broadcast of Emmy-Winning Show
The Rackspace Cloud, the cloud computing division of Rackspace Hosting (NYSE:RAX), today announced it enabled Cybernautic, a web design firm, to deliver a significant feat: host the website for ABC’s Emmy award-winning reality show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition without a single failure, serving millions of visitors continuously throughout the life of the project.
Cybernautic taps The Rackspace Cloud to keep its estimated 200 client websites up and running, including the recently constructed site for Brady Homes, the builder featured in this last Sunday’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition episode. The site handled more than 300,000 hits since going live including a spike of 41,000 users at once during peak times, such as during taping and construction, and immediately following the house “reveal.”
Cybernautic made the switch to The Rackspace Cloud when it was asked to design, build and host the ExtremeBradyHomes.com website as part of the popular show. The Extreme Makeover producers warned Cybernautic that the website would go down either during the taping and construction, or within 48 hours of the show’s initial airing. It was inevitable, according to the producers, based on historical experience with websites crashing for previous episodes. Cybernautic said they did not want to take any chances by using their dedicated servers, and turned to Rackspace Cloud Sites because of its reputation for scalability.
“In over 150 shows, it has been rare to find an Internet hosting company that was equipped to handle the traffic of thousands of people coming to a builder’s website,” said Conrad Ricketts, executive producer at Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. “No doubt this is a testament to The Rackspace Cloud for handling what, in most cases, has been an impossible task. And, without failure, The Rackspace Cloud was able to keep the pipeline open to hundreds of subcontractors and trade workers, and thousands of volunteers who wanted to step up to help a family.”
Chad Parker, president and CEO of Cybernautic, said, “I have been impressed with the speed of the sites we run on Cloud Sites and amazed at the scalability. We haven’t had a single performance issue, even with all the heavy traffic the site received,” said Parker. “We have also been impressed with Cloud Servers, which we are using for other client projects that require greater control.”
Cloud Sites enables seamless scaling during unpredictable usage spikes, such as those Cybernautic realized during the Extreme Makeover construction period, and following the airing of the episode. Parker said price was also a key consideration, as his design firm has been growing steadily, and the cost of adding more servers to account for scaling had been increasing significantly.
The ExtremeBradyHomes.com website—plus the associated Facebook and Twitter accounts accounting for some 13,000 fans—served as hub of all online activity associated with the episode. Extreme Makeover released a minimum of two news releases per day through the site, and reporters covering the project depended on the site for these news updates. Over 5,000 volunteer applications were submitted via the site for roughly 2,500 available positions.
“We are proud to assist ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition in changing the lives of the Montgomery family, and bringing the community together for such a great cause. The fact that we are one of the only web hosting services that has been able to seamlessly handle the website traffic generated by this popular primetime show speaks volumes about the value of our cloud services, especially the scalability, ease of use, and affordability,” said Emil Sayegh, general manager, The Rackspace Cloud. “We’re in the business of making IT easy and helping our customers focus on what they’re good at – in this case, helping families through charitable activities.”
Source: http://www.rackspacecloud.com/