The Planet Adds Brazil's Atitude Digital Media to Managed Hosting Business

HOUSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Planet, the global leader in IT hosting, today announced that Brazil’s Atitude Digital Media (www.atitude.com.br) has selected the company’s managed hosting services to run its mission-critical IT infrastructure. Based in Sao Paulo, the 20-year-old company provides Webcasting services to some of the world’s largest companies, including Pfizer, Schering-Plough, AstraZeneca, Novartis and Avon, as well as a number of medical societies.

In the past four years, the company has conducted more than 700 Webcasts with thousands of hours of live content to thousands of people in more than a dozen countries. A customer of The Planet since 2005, Atitude previously used dedicated hosting services for managing the company’s complex infrastructure.

“In our business, our Webcasts are live, with several hundred people online for each event,” said Chief Technology Officer Helder Conde. “Nothing can go wrong with the level of clients we serve. Our reputation is earned every time we conduct a Webcast, so uptime, stability and security are critical to us.

“We’ve grown rapidly, and we were looking for a company that provides all the services and technical expertise of Planet Northstar,” he continued. “Their Anticipation Advantage methodology helped determine exactly what we needed to create a top-notch infrastructure that could scale with our growth, and at a budget that was workable for us. We expanded our footprint to include additional servers, load balancers, firewalls, SAN storage, managed backup and database management. At Atitude, our core values include being responsive, trustworthy and committed to our customers, and I’m impressed our dedicated account team shares these values.”

“Our development of the Anticipation Advantage enables customers to thoroughly plan their IT infrastructure beyond their needs just today,” said Steve Kahan, vice president of marketing and product management with The Planet. “The methodology also provides key process indicators about when they need to begin scaling, which eliminates the worry and frustration many organizations experience in the face of rapid growth. Equally as important, the account team of highly skilled and seasoned experts is always available to customers so they have the confidence that a knowledgeable partner who knows their business is always available to help.”

Atitude Digital Media Snapshot

In its 20-year history, Atitude has kept a keen eye on emerging market trends. The company was originally known for creating high-quality, computer-generated slides and transparencies for corporate presentations, as well as multimedia productions. Today, it is Brazil’s leading provider of Webcasting services, hosting on average more than one each day from three studios in its Sao Paulo offices.

“In the last four years, the Internet has emerged as the best platform for communications, and our client base has moved rapidly for both internal and external audiences,” notes Conde. “Our clients require extensive training both for sales representatives and physicians, and they’ve found Atitude as the perfect solution to meet these needs.”

The company manages the entire event for clients. They work directly with presenters to host the event, sending notification and reminder e-mails to participants, generating reports on results, providing on-demand access afterwards, as well as maintaining extensive databases for each company. According to Conde, the presentations continue to add value for the companies since each one is typically viewed by at least four times the number of live Webcast participants.

“In years past, these companies sponsored semi-annual meetings for their sales forces, but today as new studies emerge or competitive products are announced, it’s critical that they have new data immediately, so they rely on our services to meet that demand,” he says. “At the same time, if one of these companies hosts physicians at an event anywhere in the world, they can Webcast with us from any venue, and we can support the requirement since our bandwidth connections are incredibly robust. With our capabilities, we make their lives much easier.”

The costs for hosting in the U.S. are five to six times lower than those in his native country. While bandwidth costs are slowly declining, ADSL is more common and far less efficient. In addition, because taxes on hardware are approximately 70 percent, hosting provides far better economic sense for his growing business.

“Making the decision to host overseas was difficult,” he says. “As our international business grew, I knew it was the right direction for our company. We’ve seen other companies emerge in Brazil, and they appear to do a good job, until the participants begin to load. It’s there they fail. Our speed and reliability set us apart, which makes our offering highly competitive.”

To hear first-hand about the experience of Atitude Digital Media, please visit the Web site: http://www.theplanet.com/videos.aspx?video-tabs=5.

About The Planet

The Planet is the leading provider of On Demand IT Infrastructure solutions, hosting more than 22,000 small- and medium-size businesses and 7.7 million Web sites worldwide. The Planet Alpha division provides the widest array of self-managed dedicated servers and advanced services backed by 24x7x365 support. The Planet Northstar Managed Hosting division combines a proactive methodology and seasoned IT experts to deliver a fully managed hosting solution. With the best choice of servers, software tools and world-class support, backed by state-of-the-art facilities and an enterprise-class network, The Planet turns IT into a powerful competitive advantage that enables customers to grow their businesses. For additional information, visit www.theplanet.com.

The Planet
Yvonne Donaldson, 281-714-3602
ydonaldson@theplanet.com
or
GlobalFluency
Catherine Leahy, 650-433-4150
cleahy@globalfluency.com