Reed is one of the UK's leading recruitment specialists, with over 200 branches in the UK and Ireland, and the largest jobsite in the UK – currently supporting well over 3m job searches and half a million job applications per month.

In 2001 Reed launched Freecruitment®, a product which uniquely allows over 40,000 users at businesses and other agencies to recruit free of charge via reed.co.uk.

• Stringent testing confirms all aspects of security
• Intelligent solutions reduce capital expenditure
• Reed and Attenda work together to provide jobseekers with the best possible service

In order to keep ahead in a dynamic business environment Reed is continually revising and expanding the functionality and performance of its Internet presence. In 2003, Reed decided to replace Windows 2000, the operating system running across its entire solution, with the recently launched Windows Server 2003 operating system. This coincided with an upgrade of reed.co.uk to Microsoft's new .NET platform and the release of a major new version of the site.

Mark Ridley, Head of Technology at Reed Online explained "With the rollout of Windows Server 2003, the upgrade of our site to run on Microsoft's .NET platform, and the replacement of old hardware, we were starting almost from scratch. Developing in a new programming language for a new application and deploying to new hardware are all surefire ways to introduce security flaws. To ensure that we covered every eventuality, we felt that we needed an independent audit to check our security - so we asked Attenda for help."

For the 2003 migration project Attenda provided its own test servers to check the new application under heavy load, via a partner organisation specialising in load testing. Additionally, Attenda organised a thorough security audit on the new web site application and infrastructure. "The key to this was that it was not a barrage of automatic tests" observed Ridley. "The attacks and exploits were carried out by real people trying to find errors in our code."

As part of an ongoing commitment to Reed's own recruitment consultants to ensure that they have the best recruitment tools on the market, an opportunity was identified to expand commission-led business by speeding up the process of filling vacancies.

Reed selected a specialist application designed for the recruitment market which met the business requirements of instantly matching candidates to jobs at the click of a button. Called "Search and Match", Reed wanted to make this feature easily available to its large number of branches across the UK. Ridley commented "We thought we had only one option: buying six or seven new servers and offering the hosting contract out to tender."

Working together, Attenda's infrastructure and application specialists and Reed's own experts arrived at a second option. The solution was to review the existing Reed infrastructure in order to identify and optimise existing capacity. Reed's in-house IT architecture specialists worked closely with Attenda to design a more powerful and efficient solution using the same number of servers."This was a very elegant design" said Ridley. "We have not had to increase the number of hosted servers, but have significantly improved our capacity. Every piece of our architecture has been individually optimised. We still have a small hardware footprint and we know the exact point at which we need to replace a server. Attenda can use the knowledge they gather from managing servers across their whole client base to advise us on performance and capacity management."

"We originally chose Attenda because it was the only company to provide the support we require all day, everyday. We were also impressed by Attenda's strong focus on the Microsoft platform and the tremendous in-depth knowledge and experience of its staff" commented Ridley.

"Since then we have experienced a continuous improvement in the relationship. We work very closely with Attenda's experts so that we are considering how best to manage our application as we develop it. Attenda can perform load testing at each stage and give feedback on how our application runs. This gives far greater confidence when the site goes live. Using the common language of ITIL ensures that approaches from Reed and Attenda are consistent, with a subsequent improvement in quality and availability. The introduction of a strict change control procedure and combining the Change Approval Boards from both companies has also made a significant difference."

The migration to Windows Server 2003 gave Reed increased levels of security, reliability, availability and scalability. The security audit revealed no major flaws. "We were given a clean bill of health and told that the new version of reed.co.uk was one of the most secure sites that had been tested all year" reported Ridley.

The new application is quicker and more powerful, with capacity for more users. There is much greater redundancy, with no single points of failure. In the third quarter of 2004 Reed experienced 99.99% availability that was noted at board level. "Attenda came up with a fantastic business solution which is great value for us" said Ridley.

"Attenda is always very receptive to new ideas, for example we were first offered an SLA against application availability in 2002. This was very different to the industry standard. Attenda understands our business and is willing to take on a degree of risk that gives us additional reassurance of their commitment. The focus is on us both as partners working together for the benefit of our users."