Leading UK cloud computing and managed hosting services provider iomart Hosting has been chosen by one of the winners of BBC TV’s Dragons’ Den to provide highly secure web hosting for its online parking business.

Primal Parking is an online marketplace for matching the owners of private parking spaces across the UK with those who want to rent them. It’s the idea of 22 year old Manchester University geography student Harrison Woods who successfully secured £60,000 of investment from Theo Paphitis and Peter Jones when he appeared on the Dragons’ Den BBC television programme on Sunday evening.

Harrison Woods explains: “We had discussions with several hosting companies but iomart Hosting was the only one that could give us the secure, bespoke platform and the personal service we needed.”

Primal Parking co-founder and technical director Jonathan Cherrie, who runs Bolton design agency JDC Communications Ltd, developed the Primal Parking website.

Jonathan Cherrie says: “The Primal Parking website will be processing payment transactions so we spent a lot of time on the security aspects - we have an EV SSL for a secure environment. The site is linked to a bespoke data base which utilises Geo coding technology.”

Primal Parking has two managed and dedicated web servers plus a database server pulled together by a load balancer to cope with demand and a dedicated firewall for protection.

Rhys Jones-Roberts, head of development at JDC Communications, explains: “There’s no point in making a house out of bricks if you leave the door open, so we turned to iomart Hosting to ensure that our hosting platform was just as secure as our encryption.”

The Primal Parking website experienced a huge spike in traffic as the Dragons’ Den television programme went on air. The website got a 16Mb/s burst as Harrison Woods was told he had secured two of the Dragons’ backing.

Sarah Haran, managing director of iomart Hosting, said: “Harrison’s Dragons’ Den appearance was a big moment for Primal Parking and we expected that there would be a surge to the site as a result of the show.  We are delighted to be providing round-the-clock secure hosting for this exciting new venture and we wish the team every success.”

iomart Hosting is part of iomart Group plc which recently acquired two data centres in Manchester through its purchase of web hosting company Melbourne Server Hosting.