Virgin Atlantic consolidates voice and data services

Angelica Mari, Computing, Monday 11 January 2010 at 16:11:00

Forty suppliers shown the door as airline signs single multimillion-dollar
deal

Virgin Atlantic has signed a multimillion-dollar deal with airline IT
specialist SITA for voice and data services as part of a cost reduction
exercise.

The five-year deal will see SITA provide services to more than 100 sites
worldwide as well as take over contracts from about 40 suppliers.

The transition should be completed by summer 2010.

Services provided include international and domestic IP virtual private
networks, voice-managed local area networks, cabling, core network support as
well as vendor and service management.

According to the airline?s director of finance and business services, Tim
Livett, the deal is intended to improve service delivery while generating "
significant economies of scale" and reducing delivery cost.

The deal is instrumental to Virgin Atlantic?s goal of reducing the overall
cost of IT delivery to the business, said the firm?s head of IT services,
Matthew Billings.

?We will have the added benefits of simplified supplier management, faster
deployment, improved reporting and reduced incident resolution times. All of
these are hugely valuable in addition to the monetary savings,? Billings added.

Virgin
Atlantic restructured its technology activities in 2009 and aligned them
under finance, making its IT director redundant as a result.

Full story at http://www.computing.co.uk/computing/news/2255930/virgin-atlantic-consolidates