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destra business in the news FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 28 December 2005
Ensuring HSC students access online results quickly, reliably
and securely
destra delivers on its promise that every one of NSW’s 65,000 HSC students will be
able to access their results online without any delays or disruptions
destra Business, a division of destra Corporation Limited (ASX:DES) (destra),
delivered on its promise to the Board of Studies that HSC students would read
their results via the web without delay or disruption earlier this month.
From 6.00 am Friday, 16 December, more than 65,000 NSW HSC students had
access to their results from the Board of Studies (BoS) website using a secure log-in.
“Between 6.00 and 6.30 am on the 16th of December, we had more than 11,000
students accessing our site to download their results,” said Lyndon Sharp, Board of
Studies Manager of Information Services.
“This is a record for us and our systems performed perfectly. By 9.00am we had
delivered just under 30,000 results without a hitch. We were delighted, but the most
important thing was that the students experienced the quality of service we demand of
ourselves,” he said.
Underpinning the Board of Studies successful delivery of results from its website is
destra Business, which has worked with the Board for the last five years. destra
Business provides the Board with all its website infrastructure connectivity needs. The
Board and destra work to ensure full redundancy and security. For example, the Board
hosts its primary server at a different destra Business data centre to that of the back up
server – allowing for the highest level of security, redundancy and disaster recovery.
“A few weeks before the actual results, we have an even higher level of activity on our
website where we offer self-testing multiple choice practice quizzes for both HSC and
School Certificate (Year 10) students,” Mr Sharp said. “The Test Yourself service
averages 8,000 tests per hour and the interactive nature of the tests is even more
demanding than the one way download of HSC results.”
To support the Board on these occasions, when the scale of traffic is unrelenting,
destra Business increases the bandwidth capacity to the maximum and ensures full
redundancy for the website should any points of failure arise. Additionally, the Board
had the services of a senior support engineer, allocated solely to the Board for the
critical 48 hour period around the release of HSC results.
“We would have to say, the system stood tall under the pressure on the 16th and we
are impressed with the robust service we experience and the attention to detail
delivered by destra Business at a time when we cannot afford to let the students
down,” concluded Mr Sharp.
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About destra Corporation Limited
destra (ASX:DES) is a leading internet and e-commerce company delivering internet
business and consumer entertainment solutions through its two arms – destra Business
and destra Media. destra’s strategy is focused on high growth business communications
destra Business ensures access to HSC results for Board of Studies Page 2 of 2
and internet hosting and digital media markets and the development of proprietary
intellectual property.
Business communications offerings are delivered through the following divisions – destra
Business and TPP Internet. These divisions service the SME sector through mid tier to large
corporations delivering on their needs in data connectivity, voice communications, and all
levels of hosting and domain name services.
destra Media divisions include destra Music – facilitators of the online distribution of
digital music; Musicpoint - a web-based service for radio stations providing automated
online distribution of new releases; MP3.com.au – Australia’s number one digital music
provider for independent and unsigned artists.
Visit www.destra.com.
Media enquiries
Mark Randall, Sales Director, destra Business, tel: +1300 881 112
Dolores Diez, Corporate Communications, destra Corporation Limited, tel: 0417 330 881,
email: [email protected].