The Aruba Data Center in Arezzo today hosted the presentation of the new Aruba.it Racing – Ducati Superbike Team, the only official Ducati team in the 2015 Superbike World Championship. The agreement between Ducati and Aruba, Italy’s leading web hosting and cloud services company, will last three years.

During the event, in the presence of media representatives from the two sectors (Motorsport and Information Technology), as well as team sponsors and partners, the team illustrated its sporting plans and technical innovations for the 2015 Superbike Championship, which will get underway on February 22 at Phillip Island in Australia.

The two riders, Chaz Davies and Davide Giugliano, then revealed the new livery of the factory Panigale R of the Aruba.it Racing – Ducati Superbike Team.

Stefano Cecconi, CEO of Aruba S.p.A and Team Principal, acted as host, explaining the reasons that have led his company to participate together with Ducati in the world championship for production-derived bikes.

Stefano Cecconi: “Over the years our company has achieved important results on a national level, with hosting services that include web sites, datacenters, certified email and digital signatures. More recently, thanks to some acquisitions and the success of our cloud services, we have started a process of international expansion, opening several bases and data centers overseas. In November last year we won the tender to become the registrar of “.cloud” domains, a service aimed at a world market.

“We therefore needed a new and efficient way to support all of this from an image and communications stand point. It was only natural to consider the world of motorsport, not just a very popular sport, but one that also has a strong technological component of innovation, research and development, As a fan, I knew the Superbike championship very well and had no doubts about its suitability, not just because it is a global event with the right coverage, but also and above all because – and here the project turned into the dream – it could perhaps allow us to participate with a much more active role. The initial idea was to create our own private team, a difficult but not impossible project. We were heading along that path and were in contact with many teams and riders, as well as several manufacturers: in the end we chose Ducati.

“During the course of our discussions with Ducati we decided together that perhaps we could do something better, combining and sharing our forces to the benefit of the factory team.
And it is for this reason that we are particularly pleased today: because we are not just realizing a project or a dream, but the end result of all this is so much more than we had dared to imagine. The Aruba.it Racing – Ducati Superbike Team is born.”

Next to take the stage was Claudio Domenicali, CEO of Ducati Motor Holding, who highlighted the positive sales figures achieved by Ducati in 2014 and underlined the importance of World Superbike for Ducati.

Claudio Domenicali: “We are particularly pleased with our agreement with Aruba, also because both companies share a significant series of values, ranging from technological avant-garde in our respective sectors to the ability to offer ‘made in Italy’ excellence, operating with passion and com-petence to ensure the satisfaction of our users and clients across the world.

“2014 closed very positively for Ducati, in that we achieved a new sales record, delivering 45,100 bikes to customers, a 2% increase with respect to 2013, and we have confirmed the growth trend for the fifth consecutive year. An increment also linked to the integration of new products that, despite the uncertainty of the market, have contributed to the achievement of this important result for Ducati. During the course of 2015, we will start to deliver the new models that we recently presented, among which the Scrambler, Multistrada and the new Panigale 1299, perfect for use on both the road and the track. For customers who prefer more extreme track use, we have further evolved the Panigale R, which has improved in many ways and which maintains the maximum displacement permitted by the Superbike regulations (1199 cc).

“The Superbike World Championship is very important for Ducati and for our history: we have won 14 riders’ titles and 17 manufacturers’ titles and we absolutely want to win again with the Panigale. The three-year agreement with Aruba is the ideal platform to continue this commitment and return as frontrunners in the championship.”