National Gallery updates web site

New media gets boost with improved infrastructure

The National Gallery has upgraded and consolidated its web site infrastructure to improve performance and services for its six million annual visitors.

The London gallery has installed Microsoft Windows Server 2003 technology on the site, which contains its entire picture collection.

Infrastructure management was outsourced in 2000, but National Gallery deputy head of new media Charlotte Sexton says the museum's online ambitions quickly outpaced capacity.

'One of the things that could have proved to be a problem in only a matter of time was the reliability of the site and the existence of several points of potential failure,' said Sexton.

'We wanted reliability and 100 per cent availability that would ensure a completely seamless user experience, regardless of the system from which they came.'

The site had been running on ageing Microsoft NT4 technology, using static html pages maintained by the gallery's new media and IT staff.

The museum has extended its existing relationship with hosting specialist Intercea, which hosts the site, to provide a mirrored web server infrastructure and 24-hour support on a flexible, year-on-year rolling contract to ensure the organisation gets the best possible value for money.

Now the new infrastructure is in place and operational, Sexton says the gallery is looking at exploiting its web systems for future projects. It wants to improve its multimedia capabilities and will examine the provision of elearning facilities on the site.

'The web site has been around long enough - since 1998 - for us to understand the motivation of our visitors,' she said. 'We were one of the first to put our entire collection online. Now that is one of the areas we are looking to go much further with in the future, and rich media resources will certainly play a part in that.

'We are also keen to support lifelong learning by linking into elearning ne tworks, providing things for schoolchildren to do online while they are on holiday, as well as supporting academia,' said Sexton.