DALLAS, Oct. 5, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- When the nation turns its focus to the vice presidential debate on Oct. 11, Centre College will be ready to welcome thousands of people to its campus and millions of people through its virtual "front doors."

With about 1,350 enrolled undergraduate students, Centre College is one of the smallest colleges to ever host a national debate. In the run-up to and on the day of the debate, the College – located in Danville, Ky. – expects to receive a huge amount of attention and resulting higher online traffic. In order to prepare for this, Centre College is using AT&T* Synaptic Compute as a Service^SM to host its website (http://www.centre.edu/), giving the College simple, easy access to scalable cloud computing capacity to handle these spikes in demand. On campus, AT&T is also providing a Cell on Wheels (COW) and IP connectivity to keep visiting media, students and debate attendees highly connected on the day of the event.

"These days, people are so connected via the Internet, social networks, news feeds – you name it – that we expect this debate to spark conversation across the nation and throughout the world, not just at Centre College," said  Michael Strysick, Director of Communications at Centre College. "We know that our website is our front door. If we didn't have a stable website to handle the anticipated traffic, we would be in trouble. It's critical to make sure it stays available, even with increased web traffic, which is why we're using AT&T Synaptic Compute as a Service as our solution."

Centre College previously hosted the vice presidential debate in 2000 and expects its website to receive more than three million unique visitors during this year's debate. AT&T Synaptic Compute as a Service is providing the College with the advanced capability required to anticipate increased traffic and allocate resources as needed in a cloud-based environment. It also allows them the flexibility to update the site at a moment's notice with information critical to students, faculty and staff.

"The ability to make changes in real time to our website was an invaluable feature for us," said Strysick.

*AT&T products and services are provided or offered by subsidiaries and affiliates of AT&T Inc. under the AT&T brand and not by AT&T Inc.

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SOURCE AT&T Inc.