Landelijke Kinderopvang is one of twelve organisations under the ONS umbrella. Parents have been able to book their childcare online for several years now. Previously this was all done over the phone or by people visiting their local office, but childcare places are limited and demand is often greater than supply. It was almost at a stage where people were prepared to camp outside the office overnight to try and grab a place. So ICT Manager Peter Geys developed an online registration module together with his team, but the online registrations became very popular and the website struggled to cope under the strain.

1. CASE STORY
CEGEKA - Universiteitslaan 9 - 3500 Hasselt (Belgium) - T +32 (0)11 24 02 34 - E info@cegeka.be - www.cegeka.be
25,000 hits in just a few minutes
“It particularly became a problem when parents
were able to start registering their children for
a specific childcare period or location,” explains
Peter Geys. “Not eve-
ryone has access to a
computer during the
day, so we open the
registrations at 8 o’clock
in the evenings, for
example, and announce
it beforehand. This of
course creates peaks
– up to 25,000 hits in
just a few minutes.
Our website, hosted
by an external party,
couldn’t cope with this volume of visitors. The
consequence: the website crashed and people
became frustrated because they couldn’t register
their children. A further problem was that this
caused the other ONS organisations’ websites –
with the same host – to crash too. So we had to
find a solution quickly.”
ONS asked regular supplier Cegeka to develop
a solution. Cegeka is already on board for the
software development, and it designed a powerful
infrastructure that is quick and easy to expand
but which can also shrink, according to demand.
Sharing, but still
separate
“Cegeka appointed a solu-
tions architect to work
out a proposal, which
we quickly agreed to,”
explains Peter Geys. “The
advantage is that they’re
already very familiar with
our organisation; they
helped develop the reg-
istration module. And the
whole job was finished in the space of just two
weeks, including testing.”
Now the Landelijke Kinderopvang website runs
its online reservations in a shared environment
in Cegeka’s data centre. You have to see it like a
virtual environment that's divided into blocks.
Different companies can reserve parts of blocks or
“Cegeka takes all sorts
of tasks off our hands
and monitors our entire
infrastructure around the
clock, seven days a week.”
PETER GEYS
ICT MANAGER AT ONS
Landelijke Kinderopvang is one of twelve organisations under the ONS umbrella. Parents have
been able to book their childcare online for several years now. Previously this was all done over
the phone or by people visiting their local office, but childcare places are limited and demand is
often greater than supply. It was almost at a stage where people were prepared to camp outside
the office overnight to try and grab a place. So ICT Manager Peter Geys developed an online
registration module together with his team, but the online registrations became very popular and
the website struggled to cope under the strain.
Website can easily handle peak time
registrations for childcare thanks to hosting
by Cegeka
ONS
Peter Geys, ICT Manager at ONS
ABOUT ONS
ONS is a network of organisations and
associations that is active in social servi-
ces, homecare, childcare, education and
training, informal caregiving,‘Green Care’
and services paid for by social service
vouchers. Landelijke Kinderopvang
provides care in Flanders in the form
of child minders, nurseries, after school
care and holiday camps for children of
member company employees. With
places for up to 50,000 children a year,
it’s the largest childcare organisation
in Flanders.
CHALLENGE:
• The introduction of an online
registration module resulted
in peak times of visitors to the
Landelijke Kinderopvang website.
• The situation was too complex
for the external hosting partner
to offer a solution, so ONS had to
look elsewhere.
• ONS also wanted to be able to
provide more online services and
applications, so it went in search
of an infrastructure that could
grow together with the business.

2. CEGEKA - Universiteitslaan 9 - 3500 Hasselt (Belgium) - T +32 (0)11 24 02 34 - E info@cegeka.be - www.cegeka.be
CASE STORY
SOLUTIONS:
• Enterprise Content Management
- Information & Collaboration
Management
• Enterprise Content Management
- Document & Workflow
Management
• Web Communications
whole blocks, which are of course kept separate
from each other in this virtual environment.
“It’s a misunderstand-
ing that you can’t
have customisation
in a Shared Services
model,” continues Peter
Geys. “Even though
what we asked for was
quite straightforward,
Cegeka designed us a
tailored infrastructure,
for example for communication with the back
office. We actually want to outsource as much
of our infrastructure as possible, so that our ICT
can focus on software development. Cegeka
takes all sorts of tasks off our hands.
Web increasingly important
The web is increasingly important for ONS. This
is why it’s planning to open up more data to the
web, for employees and customers, so they’ll
eventually be able to view their invoices online,
for example, or change their personal information
and upload legal documents. ONS also wants to
have a similar portal hosted for clients, because
it doesn’t want to risk ever going off air. “We’re
bringing the front office to the web: users work
with an application in their browser, so no longer
with the software installed on their PC. The com-
munication between these online applications and
the back office takes places using web services,
which is another reason why having a good hosting
partner is becoming
increasingly impor-
tant,” explains Peter
Geys.
Pay per use
Even though the other
websites in the group
are currently still quite
static – and so also
still working fine in the old environment – they’ll
eventually move to Cegeka’s data centre too.
Cegeka takes care of preventive maintenance
and proactive monitoring, which means they can
inform ONS in good time if they see any problems
on the horizon. Peter Geys: “We sometimes have
service review meetings, where we can look at
issues like these, so we consider which websites
are having more peak times and provide more
storage, processors or servers. The pay per use
model is of course very worthwhile; we only
pay for what we’re using. There are hardly ever
any complaints resulting from difficulties during
registrations anymore. Telephone calls from people
who’ve spent three hours at their computer trying
to register their children for holiday childcare are
a thing of the past!”
“It’s a misunderstanding that
you can’t have customisation
in a Shared Services model.”
PETER GEYS
ICT MANAGER AT ONS
TECHNOLOGIES:
• Application Maintenance
• Agile Training & Coaching
• Application Development
• Staffing (outsourcing –
professional services)
LESSON(S) LEARNED RETURNS/REVENUE
What would ONS do differently in this project if it
could go back and do it again? “Nothing actually;
everything ran smoothly,” says Peter Geys. Although
he does have a number of tips:
• Take time to properly identify your problem
• Map everything out clearly
• Involve the end users very closely in the project
• Communicate openly with your partner,
and make clear agreements to prevent any
misunderstandings
• Keep lines of feedback short - choose someone
who is flexible and responds quickly
ONS opted very specifically for a shared services model.
It’s true that you share the servers with other organisa-
tions, but all data is of course kept separate in the virtual
environment. And because you can for example share
your firewall and storage with others, it’s very worthwhile
in terms of expense. You also benefit from the scalability
and guaranteed availability, and you can cope with peak
times without any problems. You can be up and running
very quickly too.