Oracle grid gets a bit of Sport Relief

UK charity Sport Relief is to use Oracle's grid computing technology to ensure its web infrastructure can handle online donations and user demand.

Oracle will provide a range of its flagship software products free of charge to enable Sport Relief to manage its massive charity-fest which this year culminates in a day of events and a telethon on 15 July.

Oracle is confident its system will be able to handle an expected 250,000 donations made via phone, internet and Sky interactive. The planning even caters for around 90,000 potential donations in just one 10 minute period during the telethon on 15 July, when donations are expected to peak shortly before 22:00(BST).

Martin Gill, head of new media at Sport Relief, said in past years the charity has had to build in large amounts of redundancy and employ a team of around 20 people just to "baby-sit the system when donations hit their peak". It is hoped this year such a situation has effectively been avoided.

Gill added that in the past simply processing transactions took so much of the system's resources that "analysing statistics has always been a distant second priority", despite the fact the charity could benefit greatly from knowing which pledges are in and where donations are coming from in keeping running-totals and having greater transparency of its fundraising efforts.