Innovation for an augmented visitor experience to the Rijksmuseum
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A historic partner to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Axians Netherlands recently signed a new three-year contract to make the museum’s collection even more accessible to visitors and staff.
For more than 15 years, Axians the VINCI Energies ICT brand, has been responsible for managing networks, data centres and cybersecurity at the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, which has more than 8,000 works of art on permanent display, including internationally renowned pieces by Rembrandt, Vermeer and Van Gogh. For the past two years, Axians has also been providing the museum with NaaS (Network-as-a-Service) with guaranteed connectivity and security.
“For the Rijksmuseum, one of Europe’s most-visited museums with more than 2.5 million visitors a year, the IT infrastructure has to be very sophisticated,” explains Edwin Kanis, Chief of Marketing & Innovation at Axians Netherlands. “Each visitor can pay for and receive their tickets, find information and access audio guided visits via the network. That requires maximum cybersecurity, excellent stability and high bandwidth.”
An unusual characteristic of the Rijksmuseum’s IT network, which is designed to offer the best possible museum experience, is that it is completely invisible to the visitor. “You will not see a single access point anywhere, even though the network is available to thousands of visitors every day,” says Edwin Kanis. “The same goes for the security systems in and outside the public areas.”
Improving the digital experience
Having achieved this level of performance, the next step was to find new ways of using the network for intelligent operations. Continuing its long and fruitful collaboration with Axians, in January 2024, the famous museum signed a three-year contract with Axians to further work on transformation and digitalization to optimally facilitate employees and visitors for both an authentic and a digital experience.
“For the Rijksmuseum, one of Europe’s most-visited museums, the IT infrastructure has to be very sophisticated”
The idea is to take advantage of the huge quantity of data generated in the museum, for example via the WiFi network, to create a smart building. “By analysing the way visitors move around, it’s possible to further enhance their experience,” explains Edwin Kanis. “We’re currently working on that, and also on using the network to support restoration projects, in which artworks are photographed in ‘ultra-mega-high resolution’ and this data analysed before the conservation work begins.”
Smarter support and maintenance
Within their partnership, the Rijksmuseum is supporting Axians Netherlands in the development of its AIOPS (AI for IT Operations) platform by adding its own datasets to the platform. Edwin Kanis, Chief of Marketing & Innovation at Axians Netherlands, explains that “AIOPS is an Axians NL development in which we are using artificial intelligence to make all our support and maintenance activities smarter for customers, and give them a better overview of their network usage, cybersecurity platforms and data centres.”
09/15/2025
