Betfair Creates Awards Programme To Recognise Innovation, Value And Service Within Tecnnology Suppliers

Betfair is delighted to announce the winners of its first Technology Supplier of the Year Awards.

Betfair is an industry leader in technological innovation, as well as in its value proposition and customer service. Having created an IT infrastructure for which there is no blueprint, Betfair requires suppliers that truly demonstrate the flexibility to work in new ways, meet tough technology challenges and deliver business value. Betfair wishes to recognise those technology suppliers that differentiate themselves by striving to understand Betfair’s goals and demonstrate similar traits within their own culture.

“Betfair is committed to partnership with the suppliers that enable our continued business innovation and growth”, says Rorie Devine CTO Betfair. “The winners of the Betfair Supplier of the Year Awards all demonstrate an understanding of the value of partnership and are working with us to ensure that we meet our goal of consistently providing the best, most efficient, most responsive betting exchange and games portfolio”.

Categories and Winners:

Hardware Supplier of the Year — NetApp

• This has been awarded for NetApp’s FAS3000 and FAS270 solutions with NFS and FlexClone technology which have contributed to increased application availability, reduced administration costs and competitive price performance.
• Mark Stevens, Area Vice President UK & Ireland, NetApp, comments: “NetApp is honoured to receive Betfair’s Hardware Supplier of Year award. This award demonstrates how our data management solutions are able to help online businesses lower total cost of ownership, increase data centre efficiency and speed to market. We are proud to have been recognised this way by one of our customers.”

Software Supplier of the Year — Fortify

• A new supplier to Betfair in 2007, Fortify was selected to facilitate Betfair’s strategic commitment to agile development and testing. The investment in Fortify Source Code Analysis (SCA) as a key tool in its software development process has enabled Betfair to develop applications more quickly by automating the time–consuming manual processes that are associated with finding and fixing software flaws. Fortify has demonstrated immense understanding of the issues surrounding software testing, flexibility in supplying the right package of solutions and excellent support.
• John Jack, president and CEO of Fortify Software, said: “We are very pleased to be recognised by Betfair. It has been great to work with such an innovative company, which is committed to groundbreaking security technologies — specifically by securing software at the application level, providing better protection and driving down cost. We look forward to working further with the company in a number of other areas in the near future.”

Green Supplier of the Year — Sun Microsystems

• Working in partnership, Betfair was an early adopter of “CoolThreads” leading to a strategic power saving within Betfair data centres. Sun’s own commitment to the “Green IT” agenda has impressed Betfair staff at all levels.
• Sun Microsystems is acutely aware of the importance and responsibility placed on businesses to be green and sustainable. We are delighted to be awarded the Betfair Green Supplier of the Year award. We are committed to building products for our customers that are smarter, safer and more eco responsible — from product and packaging design to power usage to our global take–back and recycling programmes. As an organisation we’re committed to measuring and reducing our own carbon footprint and developing effective regional programs that minimise the environmental impact of our operations. Richard Barrington, head of public policy, Sun Microsystems UK

Betfair Overall Supplier of the Year — Sun Microsystems

“Sun has not only demonstrated their innovation throughout our Green IT initiative but has consistently worked with us to understand and overcome a range of technology challenges. We are delighted to work with a partner such as Sun that recognises the need for the technology industry to reject traditional supplier/customer models and adopt a more collaborative, long term business partner approach,” said Rorie Devine.