Betfair invests in new tech to get its message overseas

Online gambling firm Betfair has deployed a new enterprise messaging solution to aid its international expansion.

The company invested in the Progress SonicMQ messaging platform from software provider Progress Software as part of a three-year, £25m technology investment programme.

Betfair hopes this investment will deliver a more cost-efficient and flexible platform, and support future international growth, following the company's recent initial public offering (IPO).

The firm said it is using the SonicMQ platform to help manage high-volume message delivery at a low latency.

The solution will address the challenging wide-area network (WAN) conditions that can hinder the delivery of data.

Betfair added that, in the proof of concept stage, the SonicMQ platform processed more than 5,000 messages per second under extreme packet-loss conditions on an unreliable network, and did not lose a single message.

"We have ambitious growth plans and needed a single, consolidated and reliable solution," said Hugh Fahy, development director at Betfair.

"We needed a partner we could trust, and who understood both the demands of the dynamic business environment we operate in as well as our need for very tight service level agreements (SLAs)."