“We selected TeliaSonera International Carrier in order to expand our operations into Europe and support the initial release of online games this summer,” Derek Wise, GNi president and CEOWise explained. TeliaSonera International Carrier in partnership with IXEurope will also provide GNi with high density colocation facilities located in Frankfurt, Germany. GNi, with OGSi, is one of the leading providers of managed Internet services in the United States, offering robust, highly competitive infrastructure and bandwidth to the games industry.

Online Game Services Inc. has been refining its game hosting service provider business model since its inception in June 2004. The company now works with a number of online game companies, providing them with fully managed dedicated game hosting services.

CEVO holds online video-game competitions in North America and Australia for both amateurs and professional gamers. With a base of over 30,000 registered members, events typically have 2,500 gamers competing for up to $30,000 in cash and prizes. CEVO’s whole online experience comes through the Internet Platform provided through the LT platform, which stores player, team and match data on highly secure and accessible database servers. Layered Tech’s infrastructure operates the live virtual environments for each competition. Since launching in 2005, CEVO and its sponsors have awarded over $150,000 in cash and prizes to event participants.

“Combining our two companies clearly strengthens our ability to serve the game industry with innovative hosting solutions,” said James Hursthouse, CEO of OGSi. “We’ll also be taking our ‘pay-as-you-grow’ model into new areas such as interactive TV, video and music services, and social community websites.”

OGSi currently has more than 1,000 blade servers packed into 12 cabinets in 365 Main’s San Francisco data center. OGSi has been developing its game service provider business model since 2004, hosting sites for Ping0 LLC and GoPets Ltd. with the new Hellgate London online game. With its acquisition by GNi, OGSi expects to have over 4,000 additional servers operational for games clients in 10 datacenters worldwide by the end of 2007.

“We’ll be building out these gaming dedicated hosting infrastructure in other data centers operated by 365 Main,” said Hursthouse. “Our goal is to provide the industry with every excuse not to build data center infrastructure in-house. It’s a drastic reduction in risk and cost.”