IBM upgrades UK Defence Ministry's legacy IT

IBM has won a contract from United Kingdom's Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO), an operational arm of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to upgrade legacy IT environment and create a new centralized information management system for the entire DIO. The upgraded system will be launched in a number of capability releases through April 2014, said a statement.

DIO manages over 4,000 separate sites and includes military barracks; land, air and naval bases; and military training grounds. DIO strives to drive greater efficiency and operations of these buildings to support an estates rationalization program that will deliver significant efficiencies. Using IBM's smarter buildings software and services, DIO expects to reduce building operating costs and find ways to better utilize its existing real estate.

The MoD is one of the United Kingdom's largest landowners, it covers 900 square miles and around 45,000 buildings, 55,000 houses and 135,000 single living bedspaces. It has real estate in Germany, Cyprus and the Falkland Islands, along with facilities in Norway, Poland, Kenya, Canada, Belize, Nepal and Oman.

“The award of this contract to IBM represents a major milestone in transforming the Defence Infrastructure Organisation since it will allow us to work smarter in providing a Defence estate, which meets military needs and supports our Armed Forces,” said Andrew Manley, DIO Chief Executive. He also added, “IBM analytics technology helps us continue our work in creating a world-class infrastructure to put DIO at the leading edge of the technology transformation process happening right now across the MoD.”

The IBM TRIRIGA solution will provide an integrated property management solution comprising of software and consultancy services. This will give DIO central visibility of its extensive global property holdings and data on how efficiently they are being used. Geospatial mapping capability, created by business partner Esri UK limited, provides the real-time visualization map that gives a complete scope of their infrastructure and assets.