IT consulting firm Vintek, DataCore Software and Lenovo Data Center Group have reframed the National Portrait Gallery's digital future with a project digitising the gallery's works.

The Australian company managed the project, which saw a new IT system built ot make way for a fully integrated digital asset management storage solution providing both online and on-site visitors with greater accessibility and interactivity with the Gallery's 2,500 portraits.

The solution includes high performance, hyperconveraged storage powered by DataCore's Virtual SAN software and consisting of x3650 Lenovo servers in a metro cluster configuration, and took six weeks to build, test, install and deploy, including a data transfer of 20 terabytes of raw file to software defined storage.

Trent Birkett, the National Portrait Gallery's chief operating officer, says the new platform will enable the Canberra-based gallery to deliver better experiences for its visitors.

“We were after a scalable, reliable, fully-managed technology platform that could release our assets to the public, allow our image library to be updated in real time and ultimately protect and secure our data while giving staff flexibility to plan and organise exhibitions,” Birkett says.

“Since its implementation, the new system has increased the efficiency of internal processes, provided seamless integration of previously incompatible platforms and ensured improved security around our data,” he adds.

Paul Vinton, Vintek founder and chief executive, says the new infrastructure will support the National Portrait Gallery's growth for the next five years, future-proofing the organisation and providing a stable environment for it.

“By leveraging software-defined storage with DataCore, the National Portrait Gallery has the flexibility to expand quickly and simply by adding extra hard drives to the servers and buying additional licenses as and when required,” Vinton says.