Natural History Museum Selects Percussion Software's Rhythmyx Enterprise Content Management System to Launch New Web Site and Multi-Channel Strategy

LONDON - 8 June 2004 - The Natural History Museum is implementing Percussion Software's Rhythmyx 5, an Enterprise Content Management solution, to redevelop and expand its Web site and become the focal point of the world's natural history online community.

The museum also plans to use Rhythmyx to roll out a cross-channel delivery programme, with the initial channels being an intranet for museum staff and several kiosks positioned throughout the building, for use by museum visitors. By re-using content, the museum can deliver information via multiple channels more efficiently to a wider audience and maximise the value of its rich content.

Established around 1756, the Natural History Museum is the UK's national museum of nature, and a centre of scientific excellence in taxonomy and biodiversity. For hundreds of years it has maintained and developed a range of collections and used them to promote discovery, responsible use, understanding and enjoyment of the natural world. The museum launched its first Web site in July 1994 and was the first major UK museum to go online. Popular with natural history experts and enthusiasts worldwide, the Web site welcomed over 700,000 unique visitors in March 2004.

The museum decided to replace its existing content management system, as it needed more efficient and flexible content reuse and lifecycle management, including workflow processes for content approvals and publication scheduling. Like all museums, the Natural History Museum is content rich, and wanted to find a better way of interpreting and conveying this content to a wider audience.

Mike Lowndes, interactive media manager at the Natural History Museum, said, "There were already over 60 museum staff accessing and developing content for the Web site, and we wanted to expand this to over 100 staff. We wanted to devolve ownership of content from the central team to more museum staff, whilst continuing to maintain the consistency of the site's design and brand. We recognised that we needed to move on from a first-generation content management system to a standards-based solution that offered more robust templating capabilities and greater out of the box functionality.

Following an in-depth evaluation of several content management vendors, the Natural History Museum selected Percussion's Rhythmyx 5 enterprise solution because it best matched its business and technical requirements of functionality, capability and cost effectiveness.

The key reasons why the Natural History Museum chose Rhythmyx included:

Ease of Use- Previously, most content updates to the museum's Web site required HTML coding from the IT team. Rhythmyx enables content authors at the Natural History Museum to take ownership of content editing and publishing, and takes developers out of the content production cycle, saving time and money. The system's dynamic workflow capabilities optimise the content approval processes, enabling faster and more efficient content production and delivery.

Efficient Content Re-use-Through Rhythmyx's Active Assembly capability, museum staff without coding knowledge can group and arrange content and adjust page layout through an intuitive, graphical, browser-based interface. Rhythmyx allows users at the museum to publish any piece of content, from any source, to multiple channels.

Support for Multi-Lingual Web sites- Through its dynamic workflow and Intelligent Relationships capabilities, Rhythmyx simplifies and streamlines the localisation process, which will allow the Natural History Museum to offer content in different languages.

Predictable Licensing Model for Multi-Channel Delivery- Rhythmyx's De-Coupled Delivery architecture, an industry-first capability, separates content production from delivery and is designed for cost-effective scaling in multi-channel delivery environments. The Natural History Museum will be able to reuse content and publish to any number of delivery platforms, including kiosks and an intranet, without incurring additional costs.

The Natural History Museum is different from other museums in that it houses 300 full-time scientists. It faces similar challenges to higher education institutions, such as the publication of research and databases for the academic community. It is now looking forward to delivering innovative interactive strategies through Rhythmyx. All its visitors, including scientists and natural history enthusiasts, will benefit from having improved access to more, richer content about its collections and scientific research, via the Web site and kiosks.

Joseph Wykes, Percussion Software's managing director for European operations, commented: "As one of the world's oldest and most respected museums, the Natural History Museum plays a central role to the international natural history community. We are pleased to be supporting the museum in its goals to promote discovery and understanding of the natural world. The museum's selection of Rhythmyx further cements our solution's capability of meeting enterprise content management challenges, including efficient content re-use and multi-channel delivery. The Natural History Museum now has a reliable, robust content management system that will support its ambitious digital strategies and information delivery to new and existing audiences."