Hosting Heritage Cirqa for School Libraries

In our experience, local IT staff in schools are often overwhelmed by a list of competing requirements and the school library system can be relatively low down on the list. We are also aware that staffing levels are being reduced in many school libraries and so the extent to which a system can be fully utilised, or the spare capacity to administer security and backups limited.

In recent years we have seen a significant increase in the number of schools that have switched to our fully managed hosting service. IT departments are very happy to hand over the reins to our expert team and leave the system maintenance, backups and upgrades to us. School librarians are even happier, as they know that help is only a telephone call away and that cutting out of intermediaries and not having to go through internal security, all increase the chances of faster problem resolution. In short, a hosted system frees up capacity, removes the worry and leads directly to a smoother running library.

Leave the maintenance of the system to us and free up valuable time so you can concentrate on enhancing your service and looking after the needs of your users.

Here are some benefits of a hosted system:

• Heritage Cirqa is installed on its own, dedicated, virtual server by our team of experts. So no competing for memory or space with other systems, which helps ensure consistent performance.

• We guarantee 99% server uptime and a maximum of 3 working hours of unscheduled downtime per year. That will almost certainly represent far less downtime than running on an institutional system.

• Hosted systems are supported by a sophisticated backup facility, including off-site backup, 256 AES encryption and automated failure notification. You don’t need to worry whether a backup has run properly again, nor even to remember it needs to happen! Rest easy that multiple backups can be referenced should they be required.

• Hosted systems are continuously monitored for issues, which are often identified and fixed before customers even know there is a problem. A problem spotted earlier causes less damage and avoids lengthy investigation and time fixing things.

• All patches and upgrades are applied at pre-arranged times convenient to you. These can happen out of hours or at a point in the diary when you have time to learn about and exploit the new features and functions it contains.

• Small fixes and configurations can be undertaken on request directly on your system without you needing to be present. Another reason why you can get on with the important parts of your job rather than administering a system.

• Your data is stored in a secure datacentre here in the UK, with a very high level of protection. Rest assured that this level of protection is probably higher than that which could be provided by your own institution.

A hosted Heritage Cirqa system is like having a dedicated Systems Librarian; an additional pair of technical eyes and hands and a trustworthy colleague to turn to at a fraction of the cost of a salary.