ATLANTA, June 26, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Internap Network Services Corporation (NASDAQ: INAP), a provider of high-performance hosting services, is serving one-third of the world's 25 largest and four of the top five fastest-growing online gaming companies. Companies across the gaming ecosystem that represent as much as $1 billion in annual revenue, including MassDiGI, Infinite Game Publishing and NFOservers, are relying on Internap to deliver peak gaming experiences for fans worldwide.
According to research firm Business Insights, online gaming spend will reach $34 billion worldwide by 2014. Internap is uniquely positioned to help gaming companies benefit from this growth. With its broad and flexible hybrid infrastructure platform spanning public and private cloud, bare metal and managed hosting and colocation, Internap is able to deliver the optimal solution for any application type, including MMO (massively multiplayer online), mobile, social and casual games, as well as any use case, including new game launches, trailer streaming, testing and development and massive, on-demand scaling. Additionally, Internap's global, route-optimized IP connectivity and Content Delivery Network ensure the ultimate player experience with seamless availability and lowest latency.
MassDiGI uses Internap's AgileCLOUD to foster gaming innovation in Massachusetts
Founded in 2011 and based at Becker College in Worcester, Mass., the Massachusetts Digital Games Institute (MassDiGI) is the result of creative collaboration among academia, state government and industry, aimed at fostering the growth of the gaming industry and innovation economy in Massachusetts.
MassDiGI relies on Internap's AgileCLOUD as its exclusive cloud hosting service and is currently using the platform to develop two MMO educational games that are now in closed beta. "On Call" is a training game for medical and nursing students designed to simulate a hospital emergency department, and "Energy Drive" simulates energy production scenarios that take into account the environmental impact of a variety of technologies.
Monty Sharma, managing director of MassDiGI, notes that Internap's AgileCLOUD provides the superior level of performance and accessibility required to develop and host MassDiGI's high-demand games. "As we developed 'On Call,' we were able to spin up publicly accessible servers with AgileCLOUD in a matter of minutes. Internap enabled us to instantly access our source control servers and applications directly from UMass Medical School, where the physicians and administrative workers who contributed to the project were located. The speed and performance of the AgileCLOUD network blew me away. In game development and methodology, continuously testing with live users is a critical tool, and by using Internap we were able to test with real people right away."
When these and other MassDiGI games go live to the public, they will be hosted by AgileCLOUD. "The beauty is that we can scale dynamically to handle thousands of players at once. The only limits to scale lie with our own gaming software, not AgileCLOUD."
New games publisher IGP launches MechWarrior series with Internap
Founded in 2011, Montreal-based Infinite Game Publishing (IGP) is currently publishing three premium online games launched in rapid succession: MechWarrior® Online, MechWarrior® Tactics and Sins of a Dark Age®. As a new publisher entering the highly-competitive gaming market, IGP required a network partner that could ensure the successful, seamless introduction of its games. After considering a number of providers for high-performance game delivery, IGP selected Internap's route-optimized Performance IP™ service to guarantee the superior levels of availability, speed and low latency that its players demand.
"Great games need to be a great experience, our network must perform flawlessly so that our customers experience the game the way it was meant to be played" said Kelly Zmak, President at IGP. "We talked to many different providers; Internap was able to demonstrate the performance levels our players demand."
NFOservers hosts high-performance game servers for players with Internap
NFOservers (Nuclearfallout Enterprises, Inc.) is a premium game server provider that leases high-performance servers to gamers worldwide. NFO sought an infrastructure partner that could meet the scalability, reliability and speed demands of more than 200,000 unique players daily. After working with various providers, the company switched to Internap's colocation solution spanning eight geographic locations in the U.S., and chose Internap's Performance IP as its exclusive connectivity service.
"As a game service provider, performance is our number one priority. Our servers can't be offline – period. Gamers don't stand for that – reliability, lowest latency and speed are absolutely essential," said John Weekes, CEO of NFO. "Internap's footprint of premium, geographically distributed data centers, along with its route-optimized IP transit not only allows us to focus on our core business, but the Internap brand inspires confidence in our customers and has become a strategic differentiator for us."
Internap meets hybrid IT infrastructure and network requirements across gaming ecosystem
Internap works with more than 65 gaming companies, from publishers and developers such as CCP Games, CipSoft, Hi-Rez Studios, Movie Star Planet and Sigster, to online retailer GamersGate and leading VoIP service for gamers TypeFrag. These companies are able to mix and match Internap's full range of hybrid IT infrastructure offerings – from cloud, bare metal and managed hosting to colocation, route-optimized IP and content delivery network services – to meet any game application and use case.
"In this competitive and fast-growing marketplace, the speed and agility of data center infrastructure is critical to the success of our gaming customers," said Josh Crowe, senior vice president of product development at Internap. "The combination of Internap's extensive hybrid infrastructure portfolio, rapid scaling and guaranteed performance is unrivaled in its ability to deliver the immersive experience that gaming companies and their players have come to expect."
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About Internap
Internap provides intelligent IT Infrastructure services that combine platform flexibility and hybridization with unmatched performance, enabling customers to focus on their core business, improve service levels and lower the cost of IT operations. The company's cloud, hosting and colocation services are delivered from a geographically distributed platform of high-density, redundant data centers. Its patented, performance-optimized IP connectivity guarantees 100% uptime and lowest latency, resulting in a seamless user experience. For more information, visit http://www.internap.com, our blog at http://www.internap.com/blog or follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/internap.
About MassDigi
The Massachusetts Digital Games Institute (MassDiGI) is a statewide center based at Becker College, designated by the Commonwealth, for academic cooperation, entrepreneurship and economic development across the Massachusetts digital and video games ecosystem. In addition, MassDiGI is a U.S. Department of Commerce Economic Development Administration (EDA) University Center. www.massdigi.org
About Infinite Game Publishing
IGP is a newly formed publisher of AAA online interactive entertainment. Formed by industry veterans with a passion for great games, IGP's leadership is driving online entertainment forward by partnering with best-in-breed developers to bring high-octane excitement to PC gamers everywhere. www.infinitegamepublishing.com
About NFOservers
NFOservers (Nuclearfallout Enterprises, Inc.) leases game servers, voice servers, dedicated servers, and virtual dedicated servers to individuals and businesses, with a strong focus on quality. NFO has offered services in the US since 2002 and plans an expansion to Europe later this year.
www.nfoservers.com
Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements include statements related to the performance and design characteristics of our IT Infrastructure services and the benefits that we expect our customers to receive from them. Because such statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties, there are important factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. These factors include the actual performance of our IT Infrastructure services; our ability to react to trends and challenges in our business and the markets in which we operate; the availability of services from Internet network service providers or network service providers providing network access loops and local loops on favorable terms, or at all; failure of third party suppliers to deliver their products and services on favorable terms, or at all; failures in our network operations centers, data centers, network access points or computer systems; our ability to provide or improve Internet infrastructure services to our customers; and our ability to protect our intellectual property, as well as other factors discussed in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Given these risks and uncertainties, investors should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements as a prediction of actual results. We undertake no obligation to update, amend or clarify any forward-looking statement for any reason.
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SOURCE Internap Network Services Corporation