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Glenfield Assists With The HMAS Sydney II Search

14 Feb 2008

Glenfield Systems has been contracted to develop and manage the websites and IT infrastructure for the Finding Sydney Foundation. The Foundation is launching a search to find the Royal Australian Navy battle cruiser HMAS Sydney II, lost in action with all hands during November 1941.

 

Statement from Richard Sojka, Glenfield Systems who undertook the role as Internet & IT Project Manager, The Finding Sydney Foundation http://www.findingsydney.com.

(14 Apri 2008)

"On behalf of the IT/Web Team at findingsydney.com it has been our pleasure to bring the Search for the HMAS Sydney II to the world via the internet. Having personally been involved with the project for some seven years, I fully understand what the find and subsequent imagery has brought to the relatives of the brave men who gave their lives for their country. Also the level of interest both in Australia and overseas, the search has attracted.

The Search website although existing for many years as an appeal was upgraded on the 27th of February 2008 to commence reporting on David Mearns search team progress to the public and the media, bringing the subsequent finds to the world. Since this date we have currently received more than 12 million hits to the sites, serving more than 350 gigabytes of bandwidth data over the course of 43 days, with zero downtime. We have had more than 60,000 unique visitors to the Virtual Press Room alone to download information, which provides some indication to the extent this story has interested media outlets everywhere.

We have received much thanks and praise for our efforts in publishing the information contained both in the public and press room websites and have been extremely pleased that we have managed to bring you news and blogs as quickly as possible, with the compelling images and footage from the ROV.

The high definition images published for media distribution at the Virtual Press Room are the exact unaltered versions we received from the Search team on board the SV Geosounder. These images were compressed to a smaller size for the public to view in photo galleries and blogs due to bandwidth constraints. Aside from a small degree of sharpening to compensate for the lowering to a smaller image size, the inclusion of watermarking of “findingsydney.com” on the bottom right hand corner of blog photographs, the web team has gone to great lengths to ensure the images you have seen are as true to the originals as possible. The streaming video footage from Electric Pictures was reduced to a smaller scale for streaming and delivered as per the original source.

As the Finding Sydney Foundation is a non-profit organisation, we do not use advertisers on our sites to subsidise our web costs. Subsequently a very small web team has done an extraordinary job of publishing and delivering a high profile story to the world, in a very short space of time, within budget. It has been with care and respect for the crews of both the HMAS Sydney II and the HSK Kormoran, and their many relatives of these men that we have made every effort to ensure the websites are maintained and evolved for future generations to remember.

There have been a number of IT tasks undertaken during the course of the project, the most significant being the collation and storage of 1,435 still ROV images and approximately 60 hours of underwater digital footage from the Search Project. This was successfully completed today, with the unaltered source files archived with the Finding Sydney Foundation for historical record and copies being provided to contractual parties.

I would personally like to thank the board of the Finding Sydney Foundation and the Project Manager Patrick Flynn for supporting our team with their strong belief in ensuring information is reported accurately and rapidly to the public. It has been a great pleasure to be involved in such a historical and worthy project.

Lest We Forget Sydney