Making old and new applications work together
As websites evolve and grow they can become unstable. A clutter of new and legacy applications meant the National Trust’s website was not working one fifth of the time. We redeveloped the inherited applications to work effectively with the new.
This software integration stabilised the website and improved up-time to 99%, so the charity would not miss out on crucial income or risk damaging its strong reputation.
Client
National Trust
The Challenge
When the National Trust introduced a new look and Content Management System (CMS) to their website it improved control but created problems with some of the old applications that remained. Because of incompatible technologies the new system could not communicate properly with the existing applications.
Over time it became unstable and costly to maintain, crashing for up to three hours at a time. With customers unable to make bookings or purchases they were not coming back – and that meant lost income. The payment system was not able to accept all credit cards and posed a potential security risk as well as a risk to the National Trust’s reputation.
The Solution
We redeveloped the inherited applications in .NET to communicate with the new system making it more stable. The mix of different databases was streamlined into one clear structure to make it easier to use and help to prevent duplicates. And we also created a more secure administration tool to retain the functionality of editing data.
The Outcome
The website is now stable and works 99% of the time (increased from 80%). Membership applications are fast and accurate improving the end user experience. This translates to an increase in re-visits and avoiding lost income. Critically, all personal data is now managed and stored securely to comply with data protection.
