helsinki music centre case presentation, ambientia

Case www.musiikkitalo.fi Henri Sora ; Director, Technology & ServicesSami Pippuri; Project Manager8.9.2011

• The formal opening ceremony of the Helsinki Music Centre was held on August 31, 2011

• The principal tenants of the Music Centre are the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, Radion sinfoniaorkesteri RSO and the world-renowned Sibelius Academy

• At the heart of the Centre is the Surround Concert Hall, a capacious, 1704-seat auditorium, reminiscent of a vineyard. The Music Centre boasts of six other performance halls as well

The Helsinki Music Centre

The Project• Competitive bidding for the

job of producing the Centre’s web service commenced on March 8, 2010

• The deadline for proposals ended on April 7, 2010

• Ambientia was chosen as the web service producer in June 2010

• The first stage of the project was completed on time, according to schedule, in early September 2010

The challenge presented

The challenge presented 1/3• The Music Centre’s public website will be implemented with a

content-management system with an outsourcing of the technical administration.

Ambientia Business Platform Services will handle the operation of the web service.

 • The technology used in the implementation must have a

lifespan of at least five (5) years.

  Liferay, the preferred technical/technological choice/solution

The challenge presented 2/3• The content management system has got

to be flexible and vendor-independent in order to allow for any future upgrade or development.

• Liferay, the preferred technical/technological choice/solution

• The technical solution should be reliable and should provide/offer facilities with which to integrate different databases and server platforms.

Liferay delivers once again

The challenge presented 3/3• The technical platform should not be bound up

with the Music Centre’s technical environment. Ambientia offers the administration

as a service• It may be the case that the functionalities of the

technical environment cannot be implemented with the content management system, in which case the functionalities will be customised in conjunction with the implementation; thereafter, they will be integrated both as part of the web site and into the administration interface of the content management system.

Ambientia’s project work department

The technology

The technology

- A single virtual machine, including:

- Liferay Portal Enterprise Edition 5.2 EE SP4

- MySQL - Red Hat Enterprise

Linux 5

• Ambientia’s Business Platform Services department

• Nothing less than a duplicated VMware-environment both in Helsinki and in Hämeenlinna

The hosting environment

The challenges

The challenges we are currently facing• From day one, the volume of traffic

directed at the service impacted the efficiency of the hosting environment. It still presents itself as a slow service.

• It takes a really long time for the thumbnails to generate. There’s a Liferay bug report that's currently open concerning this issue.

The demonstration of the service

The key element of the front page of the web siteis the calendar of events.

The front page of the Music Centre

The same calendar portlets are also in use on the Sibelius Academy web site.

The front page of the Sibelius Academy

On the front page there are facilities for browsing and searching for events. Upcoming events are also lifted to this page. The settings for content lifts are easily modifiable.

Events on the front page of the Music Centre’s Web Site

The corresponding portlets are in use on the Sibelius Academy’s web site with some small changes.

The event portlets on the front page of the Sibelius Academy’s web site

The view of a single event has been implemented in the same way, only tailored slightly.

The event page

Events may be added in three languages with a guiding event-management portlet. The features of the portlet are 1) timed publication; 2) mass publication and mass deletion; and also 3) comprehensive search.

Managing the Events

It’s also possible to add timed messages per organiser – messages which are always visible on the pages of the specific organiser in question.

Managing the Events

The web site introduces news portlets implemented by Ambientia; the portlets make news management, display and lifts easy and comprehensive on the web site.

News

The web site introduces news portlets implemented by Ambientia; the portlets make news management, display and lifts easy and comprehensive on the web site.

News

The web site introduces news portlets implemented by Ambientia; the portlets make news management, display and lifts easy and comprehensive on the web site.

News

The editing of the news is centralized in one location. The features of the edit interface are 1) timed publication; 2) archiving; 3) version control; and 4) automatic image-size editing.

Editing the news

The web site has a donations portlet ensemble that is connected to the online payment interface of Finnish banks. The portlets make it possible to publish, manage and follow up with the donors and their donations.

The donations portlet

The donations portlet

There are several smaller schemes on the web site, for example, the invitation scheme. It works almost the same as the traditional Tell-A-Friend–implementation, but it’s directed at the Music Centre’s fundraising endeavours.

Invitations

Many of the features are implemented by editing Liferay’s regular article template.

Regular web articles

There are many different roles for the asset publisher...

The Asset publisher

Basic portlets

Introducing the web site: Of course there are many other basic portlets that have been put to good use on the web site, i.e articles 1) and 2)

Stop

Any Questions about…- The Music

Centre? - Ambientia? - Liferay?

Musiikkitalo/Arno Chapelle own the rights to all the photographs included in the presentation.

Thank you!