Vue Entertainment Reaches Record Breaking Online Ticket Sales With Rackspace Managed Cloud

London, UK – 13 April, 2016 - Rackspace^® (NYSE: RAX), the #1 managed cloud company, today announced that Vue® Entertainment (Vue), one of the top cinema groups in the UK and Ireland, is using the VMware® Managed Virtualisation offering from Rackspace to support an unprecedented demand for tickets that’s being generated by blockbuster films.

Founded in 2003, Vue is part of one of the largest cinema groups in the world outside of the U.S. - Vue International. The company operates over 200 cinemas around the world which deliver a premium entertainment experience, with the best choice of content combined with the best use of technology.

Vue shows over 600 titles a year across 804 screens with the appetite for tickets surging at different times throughout the lifecycle of each film. This created the need for an IT infrastructure that can adapt quickly to changes in demand so that there’s no negative impact on sales transactions due to the website crashing or slowing down.

The most recent blockbuster to test the IT infrastructure was Star Wars: The Force Awakens. When the box office opened for this film it experienced an unprecedented demand where a large amount of people were visiting the Vue website ten weeks before the release date to get tickets and consume content related to the film. After tickets for the film went on sale, 10,000 were sold online in the first 90 minutes alone, which increased to 45,000 in the first 24 hours.

Last year, Vue’s website received 80 million hits with peaks in online traffic around Christmas being 30 percent higher than any previous peak. The surge in website visitors was dealt with by the Rackspace Managed Virtualisation solution, which allows Vue to quickly spin up additional servers when required whilst ensuring that only the required cloud capacity is being used to avoid unnecessary costs. The company also has access to a dedicated team of Rackspace support specialists who are on hand to share their expertise of dealing with traffic spikes.

Roland Jones, Executive Director, Technical Services at Vue says: “As well as the speed and flexibility of the technology that’s managed by Rackspace, having access to 24x7x365 support is another crucial part of how we deal with unpredictable demand caused by new films being released. The IT team doesn’t have to worry about being constantly on call to support peak trading times at unsociable hours, something which is common in the cinema industry, as Rackspace experts proactively monitor our systems to identify and deal with peaks before they cause any issues.”

Vue will use this support and expertise from Rackspace to help achieve other goals it’s currently focusing on. This includes supporting the launch of upcoming blockbuster films, which are likely to set new ticket sales records. Another key objective for the company is to utilise Rackspace’s expertise to transform the online customer experience as part of its wider digital transformation ambitions.

Darren Norfolk, MD of Rackspace UK added: “Vue is a great example of a business that appreciates the value of managed cloud. Our relationship with the company goes beyond simply providing technology, we provide trusted advice to help them through key challenges such as migrating from physical infrastructure to Private Cloud. This is vital when working with a company to which handling large numbers of online transactions has become such a central part of its strategy.”