Network Upgrade Enhances Consumer Experience and Delivers Secured Commerce Transactions as Demand Surges for Valentine’s Day and Christmas on vermontteddybear.com
ATLANTA – (February 10, 2009) – Internap Network Services Corporation (NASDAQ: INAP), a global provider of end-to-end Internet business solutions, was able to improve website performance for Internet retailer Vermont Teddy Bear, which was experiencing website download issues leading up to the Christmas shopping season. Vermont Teddy Bear saw measurable improvement in its website performance after implementing the Internap Content Delivery Network (CDN) solution.
Vermont Teddy Bear has been building hand-made teddy bears for over 20 years from its Shelburne, Vt. location. They are the creator of the Bear-Gram concept, which includes a customized Vermont Teddy Bear dressed to suit a special occasion, a colorful gift box complete with air hole and game printed on the inside, and enclosed with a personalized greeting and candy treat. The company’s business model began with direct mail and telephone orders. Vermont Teddy Bear launched its web storefront in 1998, and today the website accounts for more than 80 percent of orders. They are one of the top-rated stores on the Internet, recognized by BizRate.com for five years in a row as a Platinum Honoree and as a Yahoo Five-Star Merchant with a 98 percent positive rating. In addition to Vermont Teddy Bear, the company has two sister Internet stores: Pajamagram and Calyx Flowers.
Vermont Teddy Bear had a long-time relationship with Internap – using its data center colocation and Performance IP networking solutions for many years. Being located in Vermont, we’re a bit off the major Internet grids, so the Internap data center and network service in Boston offered us the secured infrastructure, power and high-performance networking we needed to run our website, said Bill Cronin, director of ecommerce at Vermont Teddy Bear. Then, in the fall of 2008, we noticed some of our customers – especially in California – were experiencing slow download times as they were shopping for and building their bears. We knew we needed a CDN but couldn’t find the right mix of price and performance. The big name CDNs were too expensive, and the new cloud computing CDNs required too many changes to our systems.
Cronin continued, With Internap, we got the rich feature set of the leading CDNs at a fair price with end-to-end support and fast implementation – we were up and running in just eight hours. The best news is that we received immediate and dramatic improvement in our image downloads, so we had a successful Christmas selling season. Plus, the Internap CDN helped reduce the workload on our server farm, so there was a capital expense benefit as well. Now we are ready for Valentine’s Day, our biggest selling time of the year.
The Internap CDN provides Vermont Teddy Bear and other ecommerce retailers with the opportunity to deliver an exceptional shopping experience at a manageable cost. With image files originating on the Internap CDN servers and delivered over Internap’s route optimized network, teddy bear lovers can engage in an interactive and enjoyable buying process, while the servers at Vermont Teddy Bear are freed up to process sophisticated ecommerce transactions. Internap’s CDN is seamlessly integrated with data center colocation in 45 sites around the world, providing a secured, cost-effective ecommerce infrastructure with a global reach.
In tough economic times, Internap has found its ecommerce retailers are increasingly concerned about reliability and the customer experience, said Tim Sullivan, chief technology officer at Internap. Internap’s data center colocation, IP networking, managed servers and CDN have been engineered for this environment. Our Network Operations Center continually offers forewarning of potential web content distribution issues and adjusts routing paths to avoid congestion and outages. The combination of network products and engineering support leads Internet retailers like Vermont Teddy Bear to trust Internap to run their high-value websites.
About Vermont Teddy Bear
The Vermont Teddy Bear Company is the largest handcrafter of Teddy Bears in North America. Each BearGram gift includes a customized Vermont Teddy Bear accompanied by a personalized greeting card and free gourmet chocolate, all packaged in a colorful gift box with an air hole. Orders can be placed by phone at 1-800-829-BEAR, where a friendly Bear Counselor will assist with Bear selection and personalization, or online at www.VermontTeddyBear.com.
About Internap
Internap is a leading Internet solutions company that provides The Ultimate Online Experience by managing, delivering and distributing applications and content with 100% performance and reliability. With a global platform of data centers, managed Internet services and a content delivery network (CDN), Internap frees its customers to innovate their business, improve service levels, and lower the cost of IT operations. More than 3,000 companies across the globe trust Internap to help them achieve their Internet business goals. For more information, visit www.internap.com.
Internap Safe Harbor Statement
Certain information included in this press release constitutes forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements, other than statements of historical facts, including, among others, statements regarding the performance of our products, business strategy, projected levels of growth and projected costs, are forward-looking statements. Those statements include statements regarding the intent, belief or current expectations of Internap and members of our management team, as well as the assumptions on which such statements are based. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties that actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by forward-looking statements. Other important factors that may affect Internap’s business, products, results of operations and financial condition include, but are not limited to: our ability to sustain profitability; our ability to respond successfully to technological change; 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, network access points or computer systems; and our ability to protect our intellectual property.
Our Annual Report on Form 10-K/A, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, recent Current Reports on Form 8-K and other Securities and Exchange Commission filings discuss the foregoing risks, as well as other important risk factors that could contribute to such differences or otherwise affect our business, results of operations and financial condition. We undertake no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statement for any reason.
Press Contact:
Lisa Black
Calysto Communications for Internap
(781) 405-8289
[email protected]
Investor Contact:
Andrew McBath
(404) 865-7198 [email protected]