Hostworks lands Jetstar win and former Sun MD

Former Sun Microsystems Australia boss Jim Hassell has been named as interim CEO at Hostworks after the departure of founder Marty Gauvin.

Hassell, who led Sun Microsystems in Australia for seven years until his departure in November 2007, is already chief operating officer at Hostworks' parent company, Broadcast Australia.

Hostworks sales and marketing manager Klaus Bartosch said Hassell has been brought on board at Hostworks to assist he and chief operating officer Peter Wildy to manage the hosting company "while Broadcast Australia evaluates internal and external candidates over the next eight weeks to decide who the permanent CEO might be."

Gauvin's departure has not slowed down Hostworks, which will next week announce that budget airline Jetstar has signed over the management of its hefty web presence to Hostworks for the next two years.

Jetstar's web sites enable passengers from Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam to book flights online.

"We now run and manage the online platform for Jetstar, which has something like 100,000 unique visitors a day," Bartosch told iTnews.

Jetstar's general manager of distribution and commercial systems, Jamie Perry said the airline was attracted to Hostworks' specialists skills and virtualised environment.

"If we need more capacity than we currently have, virtualisation means it's a straightforward process to bring them on," he says. "Hostworks has the specialists on board to make it happen."

While Hostworks will manage the airline's front-end presence, for risk management reasons Jetstar's back-end booking systems are managed by Accenture-owned airline technology specialists Navitaire.

Financial terms of the Hostworks-Jetstar deal are yet to be disclosed.

Bartosch paid tribute to the departing Gauvin, saying he regards his former boss as "an exceptionally smart guy and good entrepreneur."

Bastosch said his and Gauvin's plans for the company "would not have differed greatly."

"We are expanding and growing and have new products and services to take to market," he said.

He and Wildy have been with the company for seven years, he said.