Brisbane Airport outsources IT to Data#3

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news Queensland-headquartered IT services group Data#3 yesterday announced it had won a contract with Brisbane Airport Corporation, as the group continues a drive to transform its technology services delivery model.

In a statement, Data#3 said the comprehensive outsourcing agreement would see it provide service desk, desktop support, server and infrastructure support, network management, VOIP and telephone support, as well as database management to BAC’s IT environment and operations. The deal is the first contract of its kind for Brisbane Airport.

This strategic decision to outsource parts of its IT operations will enable access to enhanced skills and expertise to meet the corporation’s ongoing business requirements and ensure that all airport operations run smoothly, Data#3 said. Data# 3 Group General Manager Laurence Baynham said that the Data#3 team was looking forward to commencing the partnership and support environment with BAC.

“This is a fantastic win for our business in a very competitive environment. BAC is a high profile organisation and our team is looking forward to a mutually beneficial business engagement,” Baynham said. “With the downturn in spend from the Queensland public sector, Data#3 has deliberately focused on increasing the number of corporate customers in Queensland and BAC is a fast-growing commercial organisation. It is also particularly pleasing to win a significant contract that aligns with our areas of investments in outsourcing and cloud services.”

BAC General Manager Assets, Krishan Tangri said, “Our expertise is in operating a multi-faceted airport environment so we’re pleased to partner with leading technology services provider Data#
3, which will allow us to better focus our resources on setting and implementing IT strategy for the airport.”

Opened in 1988, Brisbane Airport is now a major facility. It operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with two major terminals which service 29 airlines flying to 43 national and 28 international destinations. In the 2013 financial year, more than 21.6 million passengers travelled thorough the airport.

Aside from the IT outsourcing move, the airport has recently also been engaged in other operations to modernise its IT infrastructure. In August 2012, for example, the airport announced it had selected technology from the VMware, Cisco and EMC coalition to deploy a new private cloud computing environment to meet its server processing needs, reportedly migrating off a previous IBM platform along the way.

The airport said it would obtain a number of key benefits from the rollout, ranging from increased agility and scale in its datacentre to support its business growth, a reduced datacentre carbon footprint and cooling costs, and new levels of operational efficiency.

“By centralising and virtualising different projects and applications to create virtual network resources, BAC expects to reduce its energy consumption and cooling costs by approximately 20 percent,” the statement said. “Since BAC began virtualising with VMware ESX 3.5, approximately 80 percent of its environment has been reduced which is estimated to reflect the removal of 70 physical servers from operation.”

“By streamlining operations and providing a “single pane of glass” with Cisco UCS Manager for automated, policy-based management, BAC reduces its risk and improves operational agility and scalability,” it added.

“These efficiencies have helped increase BAC IT staff productivity, freeing staff to focus more on strategic, business-critical initiatives. With airport business operations absolutely critical, the platform is planned and designed with 99.999 percent availability with site recovery across datacentres.”

Image credit: Qantas