National Portrait Gallery

Since 1856, The National Portrait Gallery - which celebrates its 150th birthday this year - has evolved as a bastion of the British establishment. The NPG is renowned by art lovers throughout world as one of the leading galleries in classical and modern portraiture.

As art has evolved over the years so too has the NPG, and technology has played an instrumental part in the organisations vision of the future.

Over the past 150 years, the NPG has changed from being 'fairly quiet and scholarly' to a 21st Century modern institution that is continually moving and looking towards the next stage in terms of technological advantages.

With over one and a half million visitors passing through the building each year, it's not surprising that one of the new 'faces' of the gallery has to be in its Technology department.

CHOOSING THE RIGHT SYSTEM

Productivity is a key word when it comes to modern day technology. Any piece of computer hardware or software bought-in must play a role in boosting an organisations output, whether it's in a Gallery or any other company.

Return on Investment means that IT expenditure has to be justified. Updating and upgrading 'systems' is an expensive business. It's fundamentally important for an IT Manager to find the right applications which will give the greatest benefits in the least amount of time.

Ann Lahiff, NPG IT Infrastructure and Development Manager, says: "The key remit for the NPG was to find a Network Monitoring System that would fulfil the quantity and volume of tasks required, without the need for a complicated and expensive software package."

When the telephone call came into Mutiny, the NPG were very clear with their brief. The network monitoring application they were looking for had to be an efficient, straightforward system and there were to be NO hidden extras (for example, additional training, expensive monthly upgrades etc).

WHAT DOES MUTINY MONITOR AT NPG?

Mutiny monitors the following applications and processes:

• 12 Windows 2003, MS SQl, MS Oracle and Exchange servers
• 30 printers
• 8 hubs, switchers and routers

BENEFITS

Initially, the NPG used Mutiny to access all printers from the Support Desk PC. The main aim of this was to be able to configure printer settings, see configuration information, device status and to monitor remaining toners.

Within a month the NPG IT Department saw the benefits of using Mutiny. "The appliance freed up valuable resource time normally allocated to problem solving, which allowed the team to take a much more proactive approach to systems development."

Other key benefits were:

Resource Time - For the NPG, Mutiny has provided the necessary resource for the IT team to be more proactive in their systems application.  By use of its alerting system, Mutiny's success lies in its ability to track where faults are occurring, thus preventing unnecessary 'downtime'. 

Productive time is now used for identifying how to solve problems, not having to find where the problem lies.

No extra 'add ons' - Mutiny was able to be configured and operational in less than half a day. No expensive or unnecessary training was needed. The NPG was alerted to network faults and bottlenecks within a few days.

"In terms of integration and installation, Mutiny was very straightforward and the cost was acceptable to us", says Ann.

COST EFFECTIVENESS

As IT is coming under close scrutiny by most Chief Financial Managers, cost implication has to be one of the most important factors in selecting the right network monitoring system. 

MUTINY COMMENT

Dudley Moor-Radford, Mutiny's Commercial Director, says: "We are only too aware that cost implications are one of the most important factors in key IT decision making.  At Mutiny we have taken this on board and have provided a simple Network Monitoring application."

"Start prices for education and 'not for profit' are in the region of £2.5K fully installed, this price is based on a typical system monitoring 100 nodes / devices."