Sydney Opera House raises Web curtain

The Sydney Opera House's new chief information officer will use a recent back-end revamp to place more emphasis on the organisation's Web site.

Claire Swaffield -- who was elevated internally to the CIO position in early May -- outlined the plans to journalists at a Hewlett-Packard conference in Singapore this week.

She said a revamp of the Opera House's ticketing system and the installation of a new in-house data centre -- using a combination of HP Itanium 2 and blade servers -- would allow the organisation to put more emphasis online.

"We now find that actually a third of our ticketing comes through the Web. We want to leverage what we've put in place through this project. For example, our Web channel is now capable of supporting far more than 30 percent of ticketing traffic," she said.

"We're really looking at driving a lot more of our customer traffic through that channel. We're looking at offering more services off that platform."

Swaffield added that the company was on the brink of re-building its Web site.

"We actually put it in place for the Sydney Olympics in 2000, so I think that makes it about 90 in Web site years," she said.

"We've got a whole transformation project there to re-design the site, its look and feel, and also put in place a really reliable back-end."

The SOH is partnering with HP on a lot of its IT systems, and has worked with the vendor in one form or another for a number of years. "We went through Digital, Compaq and now with HP," said Swaffield, referring to the acquisition trail that has led to today's HP.

Thinking outside the box
One of the attributes that the Opera House found attractive in Swaffield during the CIO appointment process was her ability to bring "a different slant" to the position.

Dramatically differing from the "geeky" IT manager stereotype, Swaffield has qualifications in theology and accounting. She has also worked for Cable & Wireless Optus.

"I actually think a technical geeky CIO at the Opera House would be a complete disaster," she said at the conference.

Before taking the CIO position, Swaffield worked in the finance department on different business projects, including strategic planning.

"So I really understand the business, its strategic priorities and what some of the challenges are that people face every day," she said.

"What I bring is not a technical head -- couldn't tell you a server spec if it came up and hit me in the face -- but I can translate what a business problem is, and work with organisations like HP to come up with a solution to solve the business problem."

On an annual basis, the Sydney Opera House receives more than four million visitors and hosts more than 2,500 events.

Renai LeMay travelled to Singapore as a guest of Hewlett-Packard.