Editor's Blog: How to serve two billion page impressions

Will Sturgeon, editor-at-large of silicon.com, is blogging from the Citrix iForum in Edinburgh where a long-time contact of silicon.com came in for a well-deserved name-check.

I have just left the first keynote session of this week's Citrix iForum where it was great to hear a long-time friend of silicon.com championed for its use of IT.

For many years silicon.com has presented Betfair as one of the most innovative and effective users of technology. Better still it's a truly world-leading UK company, which is always worth shouting about.

First David Yu, now CEO of the company, and more recently Rorie Devine have taken part in our CIO Jury. We recognised early on the company's investment in technology doesn't just enable its business, it actually redefines its whole market. These are guys worth knowing and silicon.com is understandably an advocate of any successful, pure-play dot-com - whether it's a betting exchange or, dare we say, news service.

During today's keynote Betfair was picked out as a customer that Citrix is very keen to shout about. And let's face it, if you want to 'big up' your credentials in areas such as load balancing, bandwidth management and application or service availability - as Citrix is since its acquisition of NetScaler two years ago - what better client to pick than Betfair?

According to Betfair's Devine, the company's betting exchange now serves two billion page impressions per week and a staggering 25 to 30 per cent of the transactions it processes take place in running. An example would be the favourite in the Grand National takes a tumble or unseats its rider and all of a sudden the exchange lights up with punters placing new bets, trying to shorten or offset their losses.

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Guaranteeing availability around such events is no mean feat. And confidence in the infrastructure was never more essential than when extortionists were threatening the site with denial of service attacks, added Devine.

But making this process more efficient is of course not just about keeping the lights on.

Devine said: "Bandwidth is a big issue for us, the more we use the more we pay. If we can compress that traffic then we can reduce our costs. We believe as a result of working with Citrix we've saved about a third on our bandwidth costs."

Online gambling can be a thorny subject for some people, not least of all our friends from across the pond, but it was encouraging to hear Citrix CEO Mark Templeton talk with such pride about one of his company's most innovative customers.