http://dablog.ulcc.ac.uk/2007/12/20/ulcc-to-host-ukwac-infrastructure/
As well as carrying out JISC’s collection management activities in the UKWAC consortium, ULCC are now involved in another aspect of UKWAC’s work. Following the consortium’s decision to move away from the PANDAS platform, and the associated hosting by Magus, ULCC’s infrastructure team have bid successfully to host the systems that the BL will use for its new service offering to UKWAC partners, based on the web curator tool (a shortlisted entry in the digital preservation awards.)
This means that we’re both customers of the BL’s service and service providers, which might mean we get involved in some interesting conversations in the future. But I firmly believe that this dual involvement will be good for the service and for the partners. We’ll have a better insight into how the service is performing and what the users want from it, and are likely to be able to notice, and react to, problems more quickly if and when they arise. (At present, a howl of anguish following a lost piece of work disappearing into the ether travels more quickly down the corridor here than the email which explains what the howl was about.)
The new service still has lots of unknowns, not least its reliability under serious load. We’ve got every reason to have confidence in the tools, but sizing the infrastructure is not what one might call an exact science. I’ve got every reason to believe that my confidence in my colleagues in the infrastructure group is not misplaced, though.
