Upgrade, sit back and relax
Case study: A modern working environment underpins quintessential English period history.
Set in elegant 18th century almshouses, the Geffrye Museum displays the changing style of the English domestic interior in a series of period rooms from 1600 to the present day. In essence, it depicts the quintessential style of English middle-class living rooms.
While museum visitors could 'walk through time', viewing 17th century oak panelled rooms to reach a late-20th century living space, the museum's IT systems unfortunately languished in a less than modern state, hampering staff who grappled with slow PCs, large amounts of spam emails and insufficient support to match current requirements.
Interim Finance Director, Michael Tucker describes how they gradually outgrew their existing IT support. "The use of IT has increased dramatically in the past three years at the Geffrye, along with many specialist IT applications, such as an on-line picture catalogue, including a comprehensive collection and image database, interactive web-site, bookings database, mailing database, building maintenance systems and security and alarm systems."
Engaging their existing supplier in a strategic and advisory capacity, they went through a comprehensive review and consultation process. Tucker continues, "We wanted to identify IT support suppliers who not only had the technical staff and capacity to maintain and improve our systems, but who empathized with the aims and culture of the staff within the Museum. We felt we knew what needed to be done."
The comprehensive IT management package was to encompass more comprehensive desktop and facilities management support, an infrastructure review, a support service via email and telephone, regular on-site visits, additional security measures, and upgrades to email software.
Following an assessment and audit, Co-Operative Systems put in place a programme of hardware and software standardisation. Specific measures included installing clean-up software on all PCs, anti-virus software renewals and automation, MessageLabs email filtering for spam control, some PC replacements with new models, new networked printer/copiers in the Mail room, Education and Curatorial Departments, Office 2007 software upgrades, migration from Eudora email to Outlook, and a new firewall.
Two engineers were despatched at the start of the project and a more structured service was implemented so that users feel IT support is pro-active instead of solely focused on fire-fighting. In fact, the programme is ongoing with the preparation of a network audit, a Network Attached Storage box (NAS) in a secure place away from the servers to provide additional backup security and faster restore route, memory upgrades to improve performance, enhancing the telephone system for voice mail and more advanced call handling, and a review of the current intranet to ensure it meets user requirements.
The Geffrye Museum were keen to form a partnership to progress IT so that their infrastructure didn't lapse in future. As a result they identified several areas for upcoming refurbishments, such as a new domain controller to replace the ageing server (still running its turn-of-the-century Windows 2000) and a Terminal Server to provide remote access for senior staff, the latter cunningly re-using some of the museum's existing hardware. From Michael Tucker's perspective: "We needed an IT supplier who had sufficient project management experience to deliver these solutions in a manner that staff of the Geffrye Museum would find easy to cope with, bearing in mind their wide range of IT skills, and who could provide experience of working with similar sized organizations as the Geffrye, and had a successful track record. We felt Co-Operative Systems best fitted these requirements."
Positive feedback from users attests to the success of the assignment so far and the absence of spam is freeing up time for users to deal with incoming email productively. "We have regular facilities management visits to check things like the backups are working and to resolve small user issues", says Tucker. "The staff are now familiar with the IT engineers and have developed a good relationship with them."
The IT upgrade is thus a mix of the old and the new, an appropriate reflection of the institution in which it resides, where period rooms adjoin the contemporary wing and the latter is surrounded by an award-winning walled herb garden, sitting alongside a series of period gardens.
One of London's best-loved museums, The Geffrye Museum in Shoreditch shows the changing style of the English domestic interior in a series of period rooms from 1600 to the present day. Take their interactive virtual tour "Walk through a Victorian House".