Mobile Interactive Technology (MIT) has built a voting platform specifically designed to handle high capacity SMS voting services for events such as TV voting or national campaigns such as Live 8. 

Mobile voting for large interactive campaigns is not just about the application. In order to run a successful campaign you also require a high capacity SMS Gateway, and detailed proven working processes and practices with the value chain from the broadcaster or event producer through to the mobile operators. MIT have been running large scale events for many years; some MIT employees have been managing large scale events in mobile industry for 10 years.

MIT’s infrastructure has direct connections into all UK and Irish mobile network operators (MNO) enabling VoteWinner to process and deliver in excess of 2,000 cross network messages per second. VoteWinner is the fastest, most reliable and robust SMS voting platform in the mobile market place.

Since its launch in 2005, under MIT's parent company Mobile Interactive Group (MIG), VoteWinner has handled some of the biggest and most significant interactive events in history including:

• Live8
• The X Factor
• The Princes Trust 30th Anniversary concert

In July 2005 VoteWinner broke a Guiness World Record when the platform handled over 5 million SMS messages as part of the world’s largest text competition to win tickets for Live8. Later that year VoteWinner broke another record when recording throughput speeds of 1,300 messages during the finale of The X Factor. Following these success stories and an upgrade of its infrastructure VoteWinner won MIG the ‘Best SMS platform’ at the Global Messaging Awards in 2006.

The Key Benefits of VoteWinner to your business are:

• Flexible time windows to manage different voting stages
• Proven to handle high voting volumes
• Easy integration into 3rd party applications for cross platform vote counting
• Confidence in compliance, the platform has been independently audited

The core features of product and service are:

1. Managed Service
2. Application/Platform
3. Capacity/Performance
4. Feeds
5. Reporting

Managed Service

The VoteWinner platform is a fully managed service due to the complexity of setting up and running large scale events. When large volume SMS campaigns run MIT liaise with the Mobile Network Operators (MNO) in order to ensure reliable performance and delivery of messages. The running of the campaigns requires live monitoring and management across the MIT team including the technical, Client Services and operations departments.

The Client Services team work closely with customers to establish the key production elements of the campaign and can advise on areas such as number and timing of promotions. During the live elements of the campaign, Client Services remain in contact with the customer at all times; often working on site with the customer.

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Application/Platform

The core VoteWinner platform is hosted across two sites and currently runs across 8 different servers providing full redundancy. Each server can be controlled individually through an interactive panel that is used by the MIT Operations team during live events. The servers are also monitored with the processing speeds of messaging fully visible.

Campaigns can be set up using an interactive interface. Each vote can have a simple or complex configuration depending on the number of different reply messages that need to be set. Reply messages can be set by candidate, network, time or a combination of all three.

Administration and security are managed via web https interfaces, only reporting administration is generally offered to clients due to the complexity of voting; however if required more administration rights could be granted.

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Figure 1: VoteWinner operational server management tool showing server throughputs

Capacity

The capacity of any large event is driven by three factors, the mobile operators’ capacity, the speed of the SMS gateway (link) and the capability of the application. MIT directly manage and own the latter elements and work closely with the mobile operators on the first, ensuring that as many technical configurations and processes are in place to ensure success and high availability of both capacity and communication.

MIT regularly reviews with the operators both processes and technical upgrades, this results in improvements in both communication and capacity available.

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Feeds

Vote aggregation (counting up all the votes from different technologies or platforms) is an essential part of most voting campaigns. VoteWinner provides feeds of data that can be made available either on a live or post event basis. Feeds can be locked by time for compliance if necessary.

As a market leading product Votewinner is already connected into a number of the major voting aggregators in the broadcast market.

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Reporting

As with all of MIT’s products VoteWinner has in depth reporting that is available in real time and supports customer care teams. Key reporting features include:

• Vote total counts by candidate
• Vote total counts by time window (early, open and closed)
• Throughput counts per operator
• Throughput graphs (retrospective)
• Breakdown by operator
• High rollers (individual users who are most active)

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Figure 2: VoteWinner reporting tool showing a summary by candidate