No servers, no stories at Financial Times

Computerworld UK - The Financial Times Web site, FT.com, was left struggling to cope Thursday after the theft of equipment at its third-party hosting center.

The publisher was unable to publish new articles or update data on its site following the thefts, which took place at a Cable & Wireless data center in Watford, north of London.

The FT.com site is currently being run on backup facilities in the U.S.

The FT denied rumors sweeping its own newsroom that the servers that run its site had been stolen. The company told Computerworld U.K. that other gear had been removed.

"There is currently a reduced service on FT.com due to equipment being stolen over night from our third-party hosted data center site. We are working with our supplier to replace the missing equipment and will restore full functionality as soon as possible," the FT said.

Cable & Wireless was tight-lipped about the break in. The hoster would not confirm which of its customers were affected or how the theft occurred.

A representative said "Cable & Wireless are experiencing some network issues due to the loss of a number of servers following a break-in at our site in Watford. This being investigated and is now a police matter.

"We have employed a specialist engineer to minimize the loss to our customers. We can't comment on individual customers."

Earlier this year, Norwich Union signed a 300 million pound Sterling (US$600 million), six-year deal with Cable & Wireless. In 2006, Cable & Wireless signed a contract to provide the new Police National Network (PNN3) in a deal worth 75 million pounds Sterling over five years.