The organisation is celebrating its centenary in 2009/2010 and wanted to improve its web offering to enable its 550,000 members to make the most of the celebrations. Girlguiding UK expected to see a significant rise in traffic and wanted a system that could cope with the additional demands. To meet these requirements, KC, which is part of the KCOM Group, has deployed virtual machines to the organisation.
The “Change the World” initiative is a year-long online project leading into the organisation’s 100th year. According to the company, Girlguiding UK is collaborating with 19 charities to give its young members the opportunity to take part in specially designed activities that raise awareness, raise money and result in direct action.
Partners on the project include of the Earth, World Wildlife Fund, British Red Cross and UNICEF.
Eddie Thomas, Girlguiding UK’s IT services manager, said: “Since first having a web presence in 1998, its popularity has mushroomed. We now experience an average of 10,000 visits every day, with a very high proportion of our members using the facility and over 30,000 of our adult volunteers registered to use the Members’ Area on the site.
“The website is now integral to the charity’s provision of a unique, girl only space for members to grow in self-confidence, learn new skills and gain new experiences. It also helps give our young members across the UK a collective voice, for example by hosting online opinion polls and surveys, which generate media interest.”
The website will be hosted by KC using VMware software and will be integrated with Girlguiding UK’s existing dedicated managed server at London’s Global Switch 2.
“Virtual hosting appealed to us because it can be set up very quickly and it has a high degree of flexibility. This was important because we could not accurately forecast the take-up and therefore how much bandwidth would be required. Virtual hosting will assist us in raising the profile of Girlguiding in the 21st century and in recruiting new volunteers to lead the 50,000 girls currently on our waiting list,” Thomas said.
Daniel Westgate, account manager at KC, said: “When hosting capacity needs to increase, VMware infrastructure enables the customer to achieve this without the time and expense required to provision new hardware. Capacity can be easily added and removed, based on fluctuating needs which is practical and cost-effective for customers that experience seasonal increases in demand. The solution also offers a good level of security. The multiple virtual machines are hosted and managed on the same server but are fully isolated, so if one crashes others remain available.”
