William Hill, a long-time leader in the U.K. sports betting industry, has adopted the Stratus(R) Continuum(R) platform to support its revolutionary online betting system. The new system enables any non-U.K. resident to place bets on any U.K., German or Italian soccer match 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, tax-free.
After several successful decades of operation throughout Europe, the British company, famous for accepting bets on absolutely everything, has recently taken its service online to complement its existing telephone betting operation. They've set up shop in the tax-free haven of Isle of Man and are now offering bets on soccer matches to customers throughout the world.
As a Stratus customer for more than nine years, the decision to base the online betting on a PA-RISC 8000 Stratus Continuum solution, running the HP-UX(R) operating environment, was made directly by the William Hill Board.
"Stratus was the obvious choice when it came to deciding on the hardware to run the online betting facility revenue," William Hill IS Manager Mike Ellis said. "In an industry where being able to capture a bet at the right time and in the right place, a fault tolerant system was the only option considered. We cannot tolerate any downtime, as even one minute of downtime can cost the company thousands of pounds in lost revenue.
"Our server is located off-shore in the Isle of Man, hence we could not afford to have a system that could not offer us 100 percent uptime, as we do not have the same immediate access to engineers or parts as we do in mainland U.K. With the Stratus system, this is not even an issue."
"We are delighted to be working with William Hill on their innovative online betting system," said Nick Preston, vice president EMEA for Stratus Computer. "We value the relationship that we have built with William Hill over the past nine years and are constantly working to ensure that the Stratus hardware can meet the ever-demanding needs of Internet-based transactions and services. We are committed to producing systems that ensure the highest levels of data and application availability to support our global clients, offering the best price/performance in the fault-tolerant industry."
William Hill is one of Britain's leading bookmakers, with annual revenues in excess of $2.55 billion. The company is currently looking to expand its online offerings to include American football, with the ultimate objective of being able to offer odds on games in 19 soccer leagues in 6 languages during 1999.
Stratus, developers of the Continuum system, offers a range of continuously available computer platforms, application solutions and professional services for mission-critical business operations. It has more than 700 customers worldwide in markets such as the financial services, retail, travel, and e-commerce.