MovieStarPlanet Launches Online Avatar Community in U.S. With Internap's IT Infrastructure Services

ATLANTA, Nov. 2, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Internap Network Services Corporation (NASDAQ: INAP), a provider of intelligent IT Infrastructure services, today announced that MovieStarPlanet, one of the fastest growing online avatar games and communities for tweens worldwide, is leveraging Internap's Managed Hosting service and global, route-optimized Performance IP™ network to support its expansion into the U.S. market.

Based in Denmark, MovieStarPlanet is gaining significant momentum among 8- to 13-year-olds, having rapidly expanded into seven new markets this year alone and reaching more than 18 million users around the world. Originally developed in cooperation with leading education authorities, the interactive virtual avatar game and community lets tweens develop their social and creative skills by creating their own celebrity avatars and animated movies, playing games, chatting with friends and creating "looks" and more in a fun and safe environment.

MovieStarPlanet selected Internap to provide a flexible and scalable managed hosting environment that could support its massive growth and significant storage requirements with optimized network performance to deliver the website to millions of new users in the U.S. MovieStarPlanet also needed to fast-track the deployment to keep pace with the timing of its U.S. marketing campaign. Internap engineers designed a custom managed hosting environment in less than three weeks, effectively supporting MovieStarPlanet's time-to-market requirements.

"We needed robust infrastructure services that were capable of supporting the launch of our popular international web service in the U.S. and that provided the flexibility to scale and evolve along with our future growth," said Peer Jakobsen, CTO of MovieStarPlanet. "We're also in a highly-competitive market, so ensuring that our real-time virtual avatar game and community is always available and delivering fast, seamless access for our users are our top priorities. With its Performance IP network, 100% uptime service level guarantee and 24x7 support team alerting us to any potential issues before they become a problem for our users, Internap was the clear and obvious choice."  

Internap's Managed Hosting solutions are tailored specifically for each organization's needs, reducing IT Infrastructure costs and scaling to meet changing business demands. Its Performance IP network ensures fast, reliable connectivity by leveraging numerous major carrier backbones worldwide to provide diverse Internet routes in conjunction with its patented MIRO (Managed Internet Route Optimizer™) technology. MIRO analyzes network performance characteristics, resulting in intelligent and reliable delivery of customer content, applications and communications throughout the world.

"We are seeing strong demand from online media and entertainment providers for Internap's high-performance, flexible managed hosting services," said John Freimuth, vice president of business development, hosting, at Internap. "Internap's ability to provide tailored hosting services combined with unparalleled network availability and proactive support allows MovieStarPlanet to focus its efforts on core business activities while we ensure a positive experience for its end users."

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About Internap

Internap provides intelligent IT Infrastructure services that enable our customers to focus on their core business, improve service levels and lower the cost of IT operations. Our enterprise IP, CDN, colocation, managed hosting and cloud solutions are differentiated by unparalleled levels of performance, availability and support. Since 1996, thousands of businesses have entrusted Internap with the delivery and protection of their online applications. Transform your IT infrastructure into a competitive advantage with IT IQ from Internap. For more information, visit http://www.internap.com, our blog at http://www.internap.com/blog, or follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/internap.

About MovieStarPlanet

MovieStarPlanet is a fun and secure place on the web where tweens participate in a virtual world with their own personalized Avatar and work together with their friends to create small animated cartoons, while also living their lives on the MovieStarPlanet where they can shop, play games, chat and do lots of other fun stuff together with their friends.  

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements include statements related to the performance of our IT Infrastructure services and the expected benefits to be received from them. Because such statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties, there are important factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. These factors include the actual performance of our IT infrastructure services; our ability to complete expansion of company-controlled data centers within the expected timeframe; our ability to sell into new data center space; our success in attracting and retaining key talent; the actual performance of our IT infrastructure services; our ability to respond successfully to technological change; the availability of services from Internet network service providers or network service providers providing network access loops and local loops on favorable terms, or at all; failure of third party suppliers to deliver their products and services on favorable terms, or at all; failures in our network operations centers, data centers, network access points or computer systems; our ability to provide or improve Internet infrastructure services to our customers; and our ability to protect our intellectual property, as well as other factors discussed in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Given these risks and uncertainties, investors should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements as a prediction of actual results. We undertake no obligation to update, amend or clarify any forward-looking statement for any reason.

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SOURCE Internap Network Services Corporation