Case Study -- The Royal Air Force Museum

HD Video Conferencing Provides Better Communication, Cost Savings for the Royal Air Force Museum UK

HD video communications transforms the way in which staff communicates and interact across multiple sites located 150 miles apart.

Royal Air Force Museum Logo

Organization

The Royal Air Force Museum, London, England

Britain’s only national museum dedicated wholly to aviation, The Royal Air Force Museum, commonly known as the RAF Museum, is dedicated to the history of aviation and the British Royal Air Force in particular. The museum is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Ministry of Defence and a registered charity.

The RAF occupies two public sites at Hendon in North London, and Cosford in Shropshire, West Midlands.

Challenge

As a rapidly growing and popular visitor attraction, the Royal Air Force Museum has two sites and more than 160 employees. Coordination between the London and Cosford sites normally involved a 300 mile round trip and often over night stays for a number of the staff. In order to save money and to become more productive, the museum decided to investigate the potential of upgrading its legacy ISDN-based video conferencing solution. Any solution would need to provide high quality visual and audio communications and be easy to operate and transport around the sites’ multiple facilities. Training would be a key decision in the supplier choice.

Solution

Freedom Communications, a trusted LifeSize® partner, installed a high definition video communications solution from LifeSize, a division of Logitech. The LifeSize Team 200™ and LifeSize Express 200™ units with twin 52” display screens offer an immersive video experience and the ability to share content such as maps and drawings.

Results

Planes on display at RAF Museum

The Royal Air Force Museum now has a first-class video conferencing solution, which is being used more frequently than before – not just for weekly and monthly meetings across the two sites, but also for more ad-hoc cross-site discussions. As a result, communications are better and travel costs are being kept to a minimum. In addition, video conferencing fits with the museum’s environmental agenda.

Next steps and the future: The Royal Air Force Museum is planning on offering its video conferencing solution as a business service to organizations, which use the sites’ meeting, conference and exhibition facilities.

“Freedom has been excellent throughout the process of migrating our legacy video conferencing system and LifeSize the ideal manufacturer. From the initial contact through delivery and after sales they have been the perfect partners. They even went the extra mile and provided additional training that was beyond their scope,” said Sean Penn, Corporate Events Technician, the Royal Air Force Museum.