Volumes overwhelm iPredict causing outage till 8pm (NZT)
IPREDICT LTD
MEDIA STATEMENT
Wednesday 13 June 2012
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
www.iPredict.co.nz
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Volumes overwhelm iPredict causing outage till 8pm (NZT)
New Zealand’s online predictions market, iPredict, will be offline until 8.00 pm today, Wednesday 13 June, New Zealand time. iPredict apologises to traders and analysts for any inconvenience.
The site has experienced growing IT issues over recent weeks as registered traders have increased rapidly, with the 7000th registered trader signing up this week, representing 40% growth over the last year.
Today, near-simultaneous announcements of the resignation of ACC Chief Executive Ralph Stewart and an Auditor-General investigation into the New Zealand Government’s proposed deal with Sky City Entertainment caused unprecedented volumes of attempted trading in iPredict stocks on the ACC scandal, the Sky City deal and the future leadership of New Zealand’s ruling National Party.
These volumes caused the site to crash and attempts to re-start it on its existing server at Victoria University of Wellington have quickly been overwhelmed by large numbers of traders seeking to return to the site.
Consequently, a decision has been made to bring forward the planned transfer of iPredict to a new server.
This process should take three hours. In addition, iPredict wishes to ensure full testing of the new platform before re-opening trading. The site will therefore remain closed while testing occurs and will be re-opened at 8.00 pm this evening.
Those stocks which should be closed today as a result of the ACC and Sky City announcements will be closed prior to re-launch. Anyone who has traded iPredict’s daily stocks forecasting the closing price of the New Zealand and Australian stock exchanges will be refunded in full for any iPredict trading losses they incur as a result of today’s outage.
iPredict again apologises to everyone inconvenienced by these developments.
ENDS