The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam increasingly views its sophisticated Web environment as an integral part of the actual museum. Following a tender involving four different hosting providers, the Rijksmuseum selected LeaseWeb to handle the hosting of its website.

THE ORGANIZATION

Boasting a collection of 1.3 million specimens worth approximately 8 billion euros, the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum is the Netherlands’ largest and most important museum. Paintings by 17th century Dutch masters, of which The Night Watch by Rembrandt van Rijn is the most famous, account for a large portion of the museum’s broad collection, which also includes antique furniture, jewelry, textiles, porcelain, and photo collections. The Rijksmuseum uses the Internet as an important tool in its strategy to draw visitors. Many objects have been digitized and can be viewed in high resolution on the website.

MULTIMEDIA HOSTING

“We view the Internet and multimedia as an integral part of the museum,” says Rob Hendriks, Head of ICT at the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum. “The site is therefore quite sophisticated. In the near future, we expect to have a My Rijksmuseum section on the website that will allow visitors to put together their own collection, to create their own tour of the museum, and to subsequently take those tours using an iPod Touch. Visitors could mark specific works of art during their visit so that they can look up more information later, or leave reactions on the website afterwards.”

The Rijksmuseum has put high-quality images of many well-known works of art on its website, which allows viewers to zoom in for a very close look. Hendriks: “The greater the quality of the image on the site, the greater the chance that the viewer will actually come to Amsterdam. That’s the idea. When it comes to art, people eventually want to see the real thing.”

PERFORMANCE WEBSITE IS CRITICAL

LeaseWeb came into the picture after less favorable experiences with a previous hosting provider. “We therefore decided to look for another provider,” says Hendriks. “Our technical Internet partner, Q42, who handles the CMS for the Rijksmuseum, recommended LeaseWeb. The performance of our site is critical, and LeaseWeb has good references. Q42 has several clients who are very satisfied with LeaseWeb.”

The server environment, load balancing, the designing of firewalls... Hendriks is pleased to have everything taken care of. “For our hosting design, we rely on the expertise of LeaseWeb’s engineers. We’re pleased to have LeaseWeb handle this for us.”

VMWARE HOSTING

The Amsterdam Rijksmuseum is world-famous, and its website has been the target of numerous attacks by spammers and hackers. “Security is therefore important to us. We don’t want anything to happen to the site or to have the site shut down due to a DDoS attack, for example. LeaseWeb provides excellent network security. And they have an extensive network with ample bandwidth, which significantly reduces the impact of any DDoS attack. In addition, the size of LeaseWeb’s network is useful for our future plans to add moving images to the site.”

SUSTAINABLE PURCHASING

The hosting solution for the Rijksmuseum is accommodated in a CO2- neutral data center called EvoSwitch. Although the requirements did not include ‘environmentally sound hosting’ or ‘sustainable hosting,’ the CO2-neutral character of EvoSwitch is highly appreciated.

“While we currently do not have any specific CO2-neutral purchasing requirements, the issue of sustainability is already a consideration,” says Hendriks. “We have been having internal discussions about the purchasing of energy-efficient equipment. Sustainable purchasing will soon be one of our requirements.”

A FLEXIBLE HOSTING PROVIDER

Hendriks is very pleased with the experience with LeaseWeb thus far. The Rijksmuseum had to design a special Web environment for an exhibition by Damian Hirst, famous for the human skull encrusted with 8,000 diamonds worth 61 million euros. Hendriks: “We learned that LeaseWeb has the flexibility to respond to our needs. We needed a special website, but it could not run on our own servers since we did not use php. However, the special website in another Web environment was provided in no time.”