Foundry aroused by porn and publishing networking deal

Networking vendor Foundry Networks has announced a deal to supply hardware to pornography and publishing group Northern & Shell, that will see the publisher deploy its equipment at three operating locations.

Northern & Shell operates several subscription and pay-per-view TV channels, such as Television X, that offer late-night pornographic content. The company also publishes a range of newspapers and magazines including the Daily Express, the Sunday Express, the Daily Star and OK Magazine.

The publisher originally deployed networking hardware from Foundry after it moved into its current London headquarters in 2004 and completed a major refurbishment and data centre construction.

"We run a 24/7 business and need to ensure our network is up and running at all times, with maximum throughput and performance. The disaster recovery site is critical to our business, so we needed resilience in our networking hardware" said Steve Morris, IT network & security manager at Northern & Shell.

"Having experienced zero network downtime since installing Foundry switches in London, we knew that they would be the right solution for all our DR needs" he added.

Northern & Shell has gone through a major business transformation into a growing mainstream publisher and niche broadcaster. It purchased the national newspaper assets of United News & Media in 2000, while OK, New and Star magazines have capitalised on the popularity of celebrity and photo-driven journalism. The company has a turnover of over 463 million and profits totalling 77.5 million.

Two FastIron core switches have been installed at each office, allowing for failover, along with 12 FastIron workgroup switches as part of the project, carried out by reseller Matrix Communications.