Manchester Airports is looking for suppliers for a wide area network (Wan) connecting the group's four major sites.

Linking the networks serving Manchester, East Midlands, Humberside and Bournemouth airports will improve bandwidth availability and enable application sharing, says the company.

"Traditionally, the airports have run separate systems but that does not make economic sense, so we have decided to fully integrate the network," said head of infrastructure Aaron Bazner.

And Manchester's marketing and income management system, which is to be updated this year, will use the newly-integrated network for deployment across all four sites.

The group has also recently replaced its in-house web operation with a managed hosting service from supplier Pipex that provides passengers with a live stream of information and an improved online booking facility for car parking.

"Having commercial services available on our website allows customers to organise other aspects of their trip in advance and save money as well," said Bazner.

A flexible model was also introduced to handle the web site's unpredictable spikes in demand. Using a secure link, data on arriving/departing flights is uploaded automatically from source servers regardless of the traffic on the site.

"The managed service means we have been able to eliminate a single point of failure and ensure that we have full back-up to reduce downtime and all the necessary information is still available to the public," said Bazner.